The Chinese government has spent millions of dollars donated by zoos in the United States for protecting pandas in the wild on a myriad of expenditures unrelated to conservation, according to a report.
A report by the New York Times, which combed through $86 million worth of financial reports between U.S. zoos and a pair of organizations run by the Chinese government over the past two decades, revealed that the money donated to China was instead used on apartment buildings, roads, and computers, among other things.
U.S. zoos pay about $1 million a year in exchange for hosting pandas. This arrangement is allowed due to a provision under the Endangered Species Act.
Fish and Wildlife Service regulators, who have raised concerns about the spending for decades, often faced pushback from Chinese partners when they asked what the funds were being used for, according to the report. In three separate instances, the U.S. froze payments due to the Chinese government’s incomplete record-keeping.
“China felt it was not our business — that we got the pandas, and we shouldn’t tell them how to spend the money,” David Towne, retired director of Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, told the outlet.
In 2010, Fish and Wildlife Service regulators clashed with the heads of the Chinese organizations after they stopped reporting their spending altogether. The U.S. had frozen $12 million in payments over the past two years at that point. There was fear that U.S. zoos would lose their pandas, which play a key role in bringing in visitors.
The Fish and Wildlife Service ultimately agreed to reduce its oversight, giving zoos approval to fund projects directly without its blessing.
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Previous agreements made with China gave zoos the right to verify funding, but recent contracts signed by the National Zoo in Washington and by the San Diego Zoo do not include how the organizations check spending.
Despite the influx of money dedicated to conservation, wild pandas have less free territory to roam than they did in the 1980s.