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Global breeding programme benefits wild panda conservation

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 9, pages 883–884 (2025)Cite this article

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Giant panda conservation is often considered a global success story. Through habitat protection and a breeding programme that is bolstered by over 20 zoos worldwide, panda populations have been increasing and their extinction risk level was downgraded from ‘endangered’ to ‘vulnerable’ in 2016 (ref. 1). However, a series of recent investigative reports published by the New York Times2,3,4 raised doubts over the integrity of the global panda breeding programme. Although we commend the investigation for highlighting some issues that have previously been overlooked, we contend that this reporting misrepresents the breeding programme and its conservation effects. Indeed, most of the critiques of the reports were based on practices that were occurring more than two decades ago, despite being presented as the current situation.

Overall, the reports criticize the panda breeding programme as being primarily driven by financial gain and political leverage, and argue that the programme has failed to fulfil its commitments to panda reintroduction and uphold animal welfare during artificial breeding procedures. Although China has indeed leveraged the programme to foster international collaborations and participating zoos have benefited from increased visitations due to pandas, the programme has nonetheless made substantial contributions to the conservation of giant pandas in the wild. Here, we clarify three key points to rectify these misconceptions.

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Fig. 1: The ex situ and in situ conservation of giant pandas.

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Regional and Urban Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Hongbo Yang & Weihua Xu

  2. Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Front Royal, VA, USA

    Qiongyu Huang

  3. School of Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Ruishan Chen

  4. China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Panda, Chengdu, China

    Desheng Li & Xiao Yan

  5. Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Sichuan Key Laboratory of Conservation Biology for Endangered Wildlife, Chengdu, China

    Liangyu Liu

  6. Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands

    Annah Lake Zhu

Authors
  1. Hongbo Yang
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  2. Qiongyu Huang
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  3. Ruishan Chen
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  4. Weihua Xu
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  5. Desheng Li
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  6. Xiao Yan
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  7. Liangyu Liu
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  8. Annah Lake Zhu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Annah Lake Zhu.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Ronald R. Swaisgood for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Yang, H., Huang, Q., Chen, R. et al. Global breeding programme benefits wild panda conservation. Nat Ecol Evol 9, 883–884 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02703-w

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