Han Ximin

    THE Shenzhen Safari Park denied Thursday an accusation by a blogger that the only panda in the park was mistreated. Experts from a Sichuan panda center have declared the animal to be in healthy condition.

    However, the panda keeper, surnamed Yuan, has been suspended from his post for “failing to prevent a souvenir shop from making money by forcing the panda to pose for photos with visitors,” the park said in a news release Thursday.

    The shop, which charged 10 yuan (US$1.5) for each photo, has been closed.

    The blogger, who identified herself as Qiuyueguisi, posted on tianya.cn, one of the most popular online forums in China, on Jan. 5 that the 25-year-old panda, Yong Ba, which was called Panda No. 1 by the park, was fed two plates of milk and three buns a day.

    It could receive a piece of apple as a special treat for taking a photo with visitors, she claimed.

     Qiuyueguisi, a Jiangsu native working in Shenzhen, released a set of photos showing Yong Ba was not in good health, knocking on the door of her shelter for food and wandering aimlessly in her pen.

    The park said Yong Ba enjoyed a 20-square-meter sleeping area and a 50-square-meter playground, and food was supplied according to its daily demand.

    The keeper, who has 15 years of experience taking care of pandas, admitted he was partly responsible for the panda being used as a money-making tool by the shop.

    However, he claimed that the shop owner took advantage of the period while he was cleaning the panda’s den.

    “Whenever I cleaned the den, I let the panda go into the outer cage,” he said. “He (the shop owner) offered to take pictures for visitors feeding the panda.”

    But Qiuyueguisi refused to believe that, saying the workers were actually trying to earn money by forcing the panda to sit for photos.

    She said that from conversations she had with workers, the park didn’t give Yong Ba regular medical checkups and gave no thought to the bear’s food.

    Huang Xianda, vice manager of the park, said the panda had regular checks and good nutrition. He also showed the panda health check records from 2006 to August 2008, indicating it has disease of the cornea.

    One year for pandas is similar to about three or four years for humans, so Yong Ba is 90 years old in this sense.

    Two experts from Sichuan’s Wolong Giant Panda Breeding Center, who came to the park for an investigation, said Thursday that Yong Ba’s health had been greatly improved compared with the health check six months ago.

    Yong Ba, who came to Shenzhen in 2004, is the mother of Tian Tian, who lives in the National Zoo in Washington D.C.