The Last Panda by George B. Schaller

Author:George B. Schaller [Schaller, George B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 1993-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

Provinces and autonomous regions of China mentioned in text

In 1958, Mao Zedong demanded a Great Leap Forward in socialist production, his second error. Peasants across the country were urged to smelt iron and steel in their backyards. Millions of trees were cut to produce charcoal for the blast furnaces; tons upon tons of iron were manufactured, then discarded as unusable because of impurities. Crops in the fields were left to rot while people smelted. The government believed its own inflated agricultural harvest statistics until famine struck. By 1961, when “economic readjustments” had been made, the famine had claimed the lives of an estimated twenty to thirty million people. Per capita grain production was at the same level as two thousand years ago. Animals were slaughtered in incredible numbers for food, depleting one of the world’s great wildlife populations. Hardly were these bitter years over when in 1964 Mao Zedong made a third ecological error by urging China to “take grain as the key link.” Fragile pasturelands were plowed to plant grain, and the soil was given to the wind; woodlots on steep hills were felled to sow grain, causing erosion; and even fruit trees were chopped down by people who feared being labeled “counter-revolutionary” for growing something other than grain. Fortunately this policy was abandoned within two years. But the chaos of the Cultural Revolution—the fourth error—produced further environmental neglect and destruction, as well as great human tragedy, from 1966 to 1976.

I can easily understand that people who are poor and have suffered for decades, who for the first time in their existence have the opportunity to create a comfortable life for themselves, are generally not receptive to conservation. A farmer’s goal, as quoted by Vaclav Smil in his book The Bad Earth, is to use everything, and to use it now:

If there’s a mountain, we’ll cover it with wheat.

If there’s water to be found, we’ll use it all to plant rice.

Yet continued deforestation will have a grave impact on the development of China. To travel through the mountains of Sichuan creates concern for more than the future of the giant panda.

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