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| Panda Needs its Forests Not Cloning |
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| "Cloning will not guarantee the diversity and quality of panda genes and will be of no significance to their conservation," Pan Wenshi saying. Pan, who has studied pandas in the wild for two decades, dismissed the widely accepted theory that the panda's threatened extinction is due to declining fertility. The damage done by mankind to its natural habitat is the main threat to its existence. While cloning may help produce better grades of livestock or animals for medical experiments, Pan expressed skepticism that cloned pandas would be able to survive in the wild. He worries that cloning breakthroughs would absorb money that could be better spent protecting the panda's habitat. |