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September 7, 2004: Two held over panda sales bid
April 7, 1999: Panda Killers Jailed
September 7, 2004: Two held over panda sales bid
Two men have been arrested on suspicion of trying to sell a stuffed giant panda through an Internet auction, it was learned Monday.
The suspects were identified as Noboru Ichii, 45, of Osaka, and Yasunori Ueda, 72, of Sakai, Osaka Prefecture.
The Metropolitan Police Department alleged that the two men violated the Law for the Conservation of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Commercial trade in giant pandas is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, more commonly known as the Washington Convention.
According to an investigation, Ueda sold the taxidermic panda, which measured about 1.1 meter in height, to Ichii in March for several hundred thousand yen. Ichii allegedly asked a 45-year-old acquaintance in Niigata Prefecture to place the mounted animal on an Internet auction site the following month.
Police said the item was posted on the auction site with a photograph and an explanation stating: "Bids start from 8 million yen. This panda came from China as a symbol of friendship between Japan and China."
Ueda was quoted as telling police he was given the stuffed panda from an acquaintance about 20 years ago after the acquaintance could not repay a debt.
"I needed money and (the stuffed panda) was just getting in the way at home, so I decided to sell it," he was quoted as saying.
According to experts, giant pandas are currently kept and managed in eight countries, including Japan and China. They are controlled on a registration basis, and it is unthinkable for those handled by a taxidermist to be distributed through ordinary channels.
Metropolitan police said they were alerted to the case after the Environment Ministry saw the stuffed panda for sale on the Internet. Officials said there were no bidders for the item.
From The Japan Times
April 7, 1999: Panda Killers Jailed
Five farmers have been jailed for killing a rare giant panda in southwestern China.
The state news agency. Xinhua, said the five were sentenced to between one and five years and fined between 1,000 and 2,000 yuan ($125-$250) by a court in Chengdu, capital of the western province of Sichuan.
Yuan Rugang and Yang Tianbin killed the panda in April 1997, in rural Qingchuan County and sold the skin to Tian Zhongmu and Jiu Shengqiang, the agency reported.
The fifth defendant, Wang Xiuguang, was arrested taking the skin to Chengdu.
More than 60 pandas live in the Tangjiahe Giang Panda Nature Reserve in Qingchuan County and there are believed to be around 1,000 pandas left in the wild in China.
Panda rescue plan
China has launched a $36m scheme to try and save the giant panda from extinction.
Under the project, so-called green corridors will be established between isolated areas where pandas have survived by converting farmland and roads into bamboo forest.
Official reports into the Panda reveal that it is threatened principally by human encroachment while the increasing isolation of groups of pandas is diminishing the gene pool necessary for healthy offspring.
Other schemes which have attempted to encourage pandas to mate have failed because they are generally reluctant to reproduce when in captivity.
Some pandas, born through the use of artificial insemination techniques, have lived relatively short lives but scientists believe cloning , which led to the birth of Dolly the Sheep, the world's first cloned mamma, may hold more promise.
From BBC News