The announcement that the Qinling Mountains in northwest China's Shaanxi Province harbor a newly discovered subspecies of the giant panda has aroused more heated debate than excitement among panda experts and nature conservationists in China.

They point out that more rigorous studies are required to determine whether the so-called Qinling subspecies of the giant panda in fact exists.

They also voice serious reservations about plans to build a new breeding center in the heart of the Qinling Mountains in the name of protecting and preserving the "genetic purity" of what one research group thinks is the new panda subspecies.

Doubts

Some scientists also argue that the study purporting to have identified a subspecies does not offer conclusive evidence that these dark-brownish pandas should be forever isolated from their cousins elsewhere.

It is not known when the group of the giant pandas in the Qinling Mountains got separated from their kin in the mountains of Sichuan. Geographically, a fertile plain lies between the Qinling range and the huge mountains in Sichuan to the south.

However, historical records show pandas roamed widely in mountainous areas from east China's Fujian, central China's Henan, Hubei and Hunan and southwest China's Guizhou and Yunnan provinces as far back as 2,000 years ago, according to Lu Zhi, a professor at Peking University and a world-renowned scholar on panda research and nature conservation.

Until the middle of the 19th century, history books documented sightings of the giant panda in the middle of the Yangtze River valley, said Lu .

As late as the 1950s, railway workers spotted giant pandas in the hills in northern Sichuan. Such records and sightings contradict the idea that the pandas now found in the Qinling Mountains have been isolated from the rest of their families in Sichuan and elsewhere since as far back as 10,000 years ago.

Furthermore, DNA and other microbiology research Lu has conducted on the giant pandas for several years, in cooperation with colleagues from China, the United States and Switzerland, also contradict the new claim.

In "Patterns of Genetic Diversity in Remaining Giant Panda Populations," published in Conservation Biology magazine in 2001, she and her team reported findings contrary to the idea of a "new subspecies."

Lu and her colleagues collected samples from 45 giant pandas from mountain ranges in Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces, including 18 from Qinling Mountains, eight from Minshan Mountain, 17 from Qionglai Mountains, one from Liangshan and the last from Xiangling Mountains.

From their analysis on the heredity of the DNAs, they did find tiny signs of the Qinling group beginning to differentiate genetically from other groups.

However, other related DNA tests showed geographical isolation had not exerted its effect upon the groups.

Thus, they concluded that the genetic divergence of the giant pandas between the Qinling Mountains and elsewhere is so tiny that one cannot treat the group as a subspecies.

For big mammals such as the giant panda which has lived on earth for 3 million years 10,000 years is a very short time for a subspecies to evolve.

Lu and her colleagues point out that zoologists are likely to debate classification of animals' subspecies when descriptions are preliminary or vague.

The study concluding there is a Qinling subspecies was based on the measurements and analyses of 37 skulls (11 from the Qinling group), skin and other samples from 90 pandas (21 from Qinling), which other scientists say require further discussion and examination.

Permanent separation

Measures for protecting the unique hereditary characteristics of a species usually involve distinctions between different species, not between different subspecies.

Thus, during a national conference last year, Zhang Hemin, director of the Wolong China Giant Panda Research Center in Sichuan Province, and other panda experts, suggested extreme caution be applied when considering any measures in the name of protecting the "subspecies."

Scientific consensus holds that 500 individuals are needed to continue the survival of an animal species, according to Lu.

And the latest survey reveals that the Qinling group numbers only 273 pandas, according to Wang Hao, a researcher with the Giant Panda Conservation and Research Center at Peking University. This points to the need for restoring more natural habitats for the Qinling panda population to expand.

Lu and her colleagues spent several years in the Qinling Mountains between the late 1980s and 1990s following giant pandas in the wild.

They conducted a series of studies over the pandas' natural habitat and social behavior as well as their DNA and genetic diversity in comparison with panda groups from areas in Sichuan and Gansu provinces.

"Our research has shown that preserving and protecting the natural habitats is the most important in conserving the giant pandas and other endangered wildlife," said Zhu Xiaojian, Lu's colleague and a researcher with the panda research center at Peking University.

During their studies, they found the Qinling pandas had very high reproductive capability. Jiaojiao, the star mother they monitored, gave birth and bred six sons and daughters.

There are already 16 nature reserves in the Qinling Mountains and no immediate danger for the loss of the pandas' natural habitat there, and thus there is no need to build a center to take giant pandas from the wild into captivity for breeding, doubters of those plans say.

"Such a breeding center, if not managed carefully, may have adverse effect upon the small population of the wild giant pandas in the area," Lu said.

(China Daily April 5, 2006)