Outlook – June 29, 2019

FUR BALLS

year-old Kichi—from Mowgli’s red panda friend

in The Jungle Book—and her three cubs...Noel,

Joel and the yet-to-be-named sibling. The mom

feasts on tender bamboo leaves as her young

hover around and make soft squealing noises—

called a huff-quack. They are perched high on

oak trees, eyeing the humans below with guarded

suspicion.

“R

ED panda’s favourite food is bamboo (per-

haps the sole weakness it shares with the

giant panda). Though the red panda is

omn ivorous and will eat an occasional fruit

or leaf or even an insect or egg, bamboo makes up

around 95 per cent of its diet,” says Pranita

Gupta, a young education assistant at the PNHZP,

who has been studying this adorable animal for

more than five years at the park. But bamboo is a

perplexing evolutionary choice for the red pan-

das. “A panda’s digestive system doesn’t have the

required microbes to help properly absorb plant

nutrients and to compound matters, bamboo

contains little nutritional value...

Red pandas digest less than a

quarter of the food and so they

are fed twice a day—morning

and evening. To supplement

their diet, they are given milk

mixed with raw eggs and honey,

besides fruits such as apples and

bananas in the morning.”

The low-nutrient diet forces them

to sleep a lot and conserve energy.

Hence, they are solitary creatures.

But these furry mammals’ prefer-

ence for an arboreal lifestyle has put

them in a vulnerable position. “The

biggest danger in the wild is man...

expanding human population, def-

orestation, habitat loss, and disease,

contracted primarily from domes-

tic dogs. All these and hunting

and poaching,” says PNHZP

dir ector Rajendra Jhakar. It is

not a surprise that there aren’t

more than 2,500 adults (estimated) left in the wild.

Besides, it is hard to maintain a census because of

their secretive nature.

In the early 1990s, in response to international

conservation efforts, the park joined the ‘global

captive breeding master plan’—a population man-

agement programme for the recovery and long-

term survival of captive and wild red pandas. “Four

young pandas were brought to kickstart the ven-

ture,” says Jhakar. The project was expanded in

2016 with new facilities at Topkeydara.

At present, the park has one of the oldest living

captive pandas in the world. Pokhraj: 17 years and

nine months. Over the past decade, the programme

has recorded 41 births—21 females and 20 males—

including five at Topkeydara.

Biology student Gupta, along with colleagues

Nandini Chettri and Purna Ghisingh, the game-

keeper at the PNHZP, recognises that her work is

important for the protection and

survival of the species in the wild.

The aim of the conservation/

breeding project is to maintain

and restore lost population

and have a higher genetic

diversity so that the cap-

tive-bred red pandas have

a chance to survive in the

wild, says Gupta. Of the

seven in the park, the aut-

horities plan to release

four in the wild by this

autumn. The authorities

had introduced two fem-

ales in the wild in 2003. Of

them, Sweetie gave birth to

a cub in July 2004 in the

hollow of an oak tree.

The animals are tagged and

fitted with radio collars and

micro-chips detailing the

name and sex of the animal.

“With fragmented forests,

patches of agricultural land in

between, there’s no way for the

pandas to migrate to greener

bamboo pastures or find new

partners. That leads to inbreeding

and disease and decline of the

species,” says Jhakar. “So it is

ess ential that genetic diversity is

maintained.”

The red panda, or Ailurus

fulgens—the fire-coloured cat

or the firefox—looks for company

when it’s time to mate. The reclusive

and temperamental animals need a

break from each other, even when kept in confine-

ment. The park officials provide separate sleeping

areas to let the pandas enjoy some “me-time”

alone. “The cuddly animals are loners, and for the

most part, silent. Once the male panda mates, he

loses interest in the female and moves away,” says

Gupta. She’s also found individuals that are

un-panda-like gregarious. “Kichi is instinctively

possessive of her young ones. If threatened, she

will constantly move the cubs from one tree hol-

low to another.”

In Topkeydara, the elusive furballs are finding a

habitat—be it human-intervened—to get on with

what Oogway would have said: “One often meets

his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.” They

are safe in a place that offers spectacular views of

the Singalila ridge—range to range, all the way to

Mount Kanchenjunga, the guardian deity. O

l Red pandas and

snow leopards are

critical indicators of

the health of the

Himalayan ecosystem

l Both are solitary

animals. Red pandas

are active at dawn,

dusk, and at night.

They live at altitudes

between 4,900 and

16,500 feet

l They are sometimes

called lesser panda

l Western research-

ers found red pandas

much before the giant

panda in 1869

PANDAS & LEOS

MEET TAI

LUNG A snow

leopard at the

Darjeeling

centre

58 OUTLOOK 1 July 2019