By NICHOLAS KREBS, 7/07/2012. I’ve waited far too long to update here on my academic project and experiences in Sichuan, so while I continue to work on that several page long entry, here is a fun aside from my visit to the Chengdu Panda Research Base today. These photos are from early this morning around 8:30am when they are eating and still have energy to do something. Otherwise they lie around all day.

Morning feeding time for pandas.

Red panda that snuck through fence and ran by me.

Pandas up in the trees.  Interesting videos of how they clumsily scale the trees to follow on Facebook.

The visit today confirmed my belief that pandas should be allowed to die out as a species. Watched an informative video about panda reproduction at the center and essentially the folks in Chengdu have to combine both artificial insemination with a special massage to even have a shot at starting the reproductive process.  Then if the near miracle occurs and a baby panda is born, it is only 100g (1/1000 the size of its mother) and faces the indignity of its mother smacking it around on cold concrete like a doll.  Without human intervention there is simply no chance these animals can survive, even if we gave them the entire country of China to wander as a human uninhabited playground.  I suppose I could be convinced that having a cute animal as the figurehead of a global environmental movement is good for fundraising and provides a net beneficial impact for conservation, but in the long run we probably need to learn to value ugly life intrinsically, like the ugly toads that are dying everywhere from global warming.