Tim Flach British, b. 1958

(FRANÇAIS CI-DESSOUS)

GIANT PANDA

Scientific name: Ailuropoda melanoleuca

Range: Gansu, Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces (China)

IUCN Red List Status: Vulnerable

In the 1980’s, the Chinese government launched one of the history’s largest and most expensive conservation campaigns to save the giant panda. Poaching was banned, forests were protected, and the plight of the panda was brought to international recognition. The effort eventually led to an increase in the giant panda’s wild population, and, in 2016, the species was finally downgraded from Endangered to Vulnerable. Many groups were jubilant, and saw the reclassification as a triumph of hard work and government action, but others were concerned that the downgrade was misleading, and could encourage funding and research to slacken. Indeed, the giant panda’s future remains precarious: there are still only two thousand individuals living in the wild, scattered across several isolated populations. Zhang Hemin, head of the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas, is concerned for the genetic viability of the wild populations, given that it comprises thirty-three groups - “some”, he adds “with fewer than ten individuals, severely limiting the gene pool”. Furthermore, their food source, bamboo, is highly sensitive to temperature, and China’s bamboo forests will soon be widely and severely damaged by climate change.

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(FRANÇAIS)

PANDA GEANT

Nom scientifique: Ailuropoda melanoleuca

Zone de présence: Chine (provinces du Gansu, Hubei, Shaanxi, et Sichuan)

Status sur la liste rouge de l'UICN: Espèce en Danger (EN)

Dans les années 1980, le gouvernement Chinois mis en place l’une des plus chères et importantes campagnes de préservation du panda géant. Le braconnage fut interdit, les forêts protégées, et le sort du panda mis en lumière sur la scène internationale. Ces efforts aboutirent à l’accroissement de la population de cette espèce et, en 2016, elle fut déclassée d’espèce en danger à espèce vulnérable. De nombreux groupes de protection s’en réjouirent, voyant ici le fruit de leurs efforts ainsi que celui des actions menées par le gouvernement, tandis que d’autres le jugèrent prône à la confusion, pouvant de fait diminuer l’allocation des fonds destinés à leur préservation ainsi qu’à la recherche dans ce but. En effet, le futur des pandas géants demeure incertain. Il n’existe aujourd’hui que deux mille individus sauvages, dispersés en plusieurs petits groupes isolés les uns des autres. Zhang Hemin, à la tête du Centre pour la Conservation et la Recherche sur les Pandas Géants, fait part de ses préoccupations concernant la viabilité génétique de ces populations sauvages qui elles-même se composent principalement de trente-trois groupes. “Certaines”, ajoute t’il, “se composent de moins de dix individus, ce qui limite drastiquement le renouvellement de leur patrimoine génétique”. De plus, leur principale source d’alimentation, le bambou, est hautement sensible aux variations de températures et les forêts de bambou Chinoises sont de fait vouées à se décimer de façon radicale à cause du changement climatique qui s’opère.

Ya Yun, a mischievous female from Chengdu, China, under the care of the Panda Research Centre, was chosen as the star model. Since he only had a few minutes to take this shot, Flach spent time practising with a toy panda before Ya Yun entered the room. Once inside the studio Ya Yun took an instant dislike to her new surroundings. "She pulled down my perfectly positioned black backdrop. She tore it cleanly in two, enjoying every moment," Flach says. "It was a beautiful piece of crushed velvet that we bought all the way from the UK. I had to piece it back together and make do".

Hungry Ya Yun had to be tamed by food. "Usually, they would have a stick of bamboo but we gave her small fragments of apple that wouldn’t be as obvious in the shot," says Flach. "I sought to focusing on Ya Yun's personality as an individual, needing to move the portrait away from a normal bamboo eating panda. What I got was something very gestural and ambiguous, you can easily imagine her holding a microphone or ice cream".
Ya Yun, a mischievous female from Chengdu, China, under the care of the Panda Research Centre, was chosen as the star model. Since he only had a few minutes to take this shot, Flach spent time practising with a toy panda before Ya Yun entered the room. Once inside the studio Ya Yun took an instant dislike to her new surroundings. "She pulled down my perfectly positioned black backdrop. She tore it cleanly in two, enjoying every moment," Flach says. "It was a beautiful piece of crushed velvet that we bought all the way from the UK. I had to piece it back together and make do".