How the quest for the giant panda changed modern conservation

You're listening to NPR. You care about local politics. But it can be hard to keep track and understand how it affects you. I'm Scott Greenstone. And I'm Libby Denkman. And on Sound Politics, we talk about this and the other Washington like normal people. As normal as we can pretend to be. We get beyond the headlines, ask the tough questions, and tie the big stories back to our own backyard. Sound Politics. Listen now on the KUW app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, wildlings. I hope you're enjoying this season of The Wild. If you want even more content, you can head over to our Patreon. We've got extended interviews, polls for you to vote on, and stories and chats you won't hear anywhere else about The Wild behind the scenes. There's a link to our Patreon in the show notes of this episode. Okay, enjoy the show. Joseph Milner was an American missionary who was living in China. And during one of his visits to the marketplace, he saw an unusual pelt, black and white. He'd never seen anything like it before. The year was 1919. This missionary, Milner, had a feeling that the unusual pelt he'd stumbled across in a little Chinese market was something special. So he bought it and shipped it home to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. And here it caused a sensation. The museum announced that they had this animal. They had a creature from Tibet, a rare beast. People didn't know what this rare beast was. Some suggested it could be a bear of some sort. One unfolded is like a story from an Indiana Jones movie. And author Dr. Nathalia Holt has traced every detail of it. There had been many scientists who had said, this might be a hoax. What kind of bear would have black and white? It's been dyed. It's not real. But it was real. And it was a bear. Today, we call it the giant panda. And when that pelt was first put on display, it set the scientific world buzzing. More expeditions set off for China to search for proof of the black and white beast. Not one panda is brought back to Westerners. And now people are starting to get skeptical again. They're wondering if the panda is actually real. Remember, it's the 1920s. Fortune and fame could be made from pelts and scientific discoveries, so the incentive is huge. But nearly a decade goes by, and no one can find a second giant panda. All this fuss catches the ear of two brothers, Two pretty famous brothers. And so in 1928, when the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt decide that they're going to go out and find the panda, very few people think they'll be successful. It is really a surprise that their expedition is able to accomplish what it does. That's right. Teddy Roosevelt's boys took up the case. It's a remarkable story, one that was almost lost to history. and Nathalia Holt tells it in her new book, The Beast in the Clouds, the Roosevelt brothers' deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda. But this story is about way more than just two brothers' dangerous search for a mysterious species in a strange part of the world. It's also about the moment in history when humans began to understand their real impact on the natural world, a realization that led to the birth of the modern conservation movement. Oh, and there might be some Himalayan bandits and bone-chilling blizzards along the way. From KUOW in Seattle and Chris Morgan Wildlife, welcome to the wild. Dr. Nathalia Holt got her PhD in biology and is also a New York Times bestselling author. Her work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Slate and Popular Science. Today, my conversation mixes two, maybe three of my favorite things, bears, mystery and adventure. Nathalia, thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me. The closest I've got to a giant panda is narrating a documentary about them a few years ago, but never been into panda country, never seen one in the wild. This is all going to be so new to me. It's fun to talk about pandas because they are rare today as they were in the age of the Roosevelt. Right, right. Yes, they still struggle and need attention like they did back then, hey? So at the beginning of the 20th century, what was known about the giant panda? Very little was known about the panda at this time In fact, the Museum of Natural History put in their publication that they knew nothing about the environment, the diet Anything at all about the panda was still unknown All they had at this point was a pelt And so to be able to find basic information was important And I suppose it was a time, like you say, when there was so much unknown about the wild world, wasn't it? Absolutely. The 1920s were this time of exploration when scientists were going out. They were discovering new species. Nobody knew which mountain was the tallest on Earth. Nobody knew which trench in the ocean was the deepest. There were explorers headed to every corner of the globe. And what's interesting about the panda is that it is the last large mammal unknown to science. Brown bears, black bears, even polar bears had long been known by humans. You would think polar bears surely wouldn't have been discovered early on, but that's not the case. We know there was a polar bear in the zoo in Alexandria. And there was even a polar bear in the Menagerie in the Tower of London in 1252. So the panda is really something different. It's really this animal that was unknown to Westerners. And even in China, where you would expect the bear to be known, it wasn't. And it has a lot to do with where the panda was found. China, of course, is a vast country. And the panda is found only in select parts of high elevation bamboo forests. And certainly there was just simply not the information, even among scientists in China, to understand that the panda was this real bear that could be studied. That's very interesting. because I was assuming it was mostly the Western world that didn't know about it. But it was a mystery on its home turf as well. That's fascinating. Some of the stories that describe this bear, it was seen as fierce, wasn't it? What else can you tell me about what people thought it was in the mind's eye? That's right. It was seen as a likely aggressive species. And they thought that it might be a combination of a black bear and a polar bear. So this would then be... Which makes sense, doesn't it? Looking at a giant panda, you know, this is exactly what it looks like, a combination of the black and white. Yes. So when the Roosevelts are going out to find the panda, they are expecting to encounter an aggressive species that is going to attack them. You can imagine how surprised they were to find out the truth. Yeah. So these two people were paying very close attention to all of this unfolding of the mysterious hide and the giant panda sort of legend. Kermit Roosevelt and his brother Theodore Jr. Ted, he went by, right? That's right. They were sons of the famous U.S. president, Teddy Roosevelt. What can you tell us about these brothers? Who were they as people? So you can imagine that being the eldest sons of a famous man is not easy. And certainly Teddy Roosevelt, he's a larger than life figure. This is a president who really made his mark on conservation in the United States. And so his two sons very much are trying to follow in his footsteps. But at this point in their lives, they're in their late 30s and early 40s. They are struggling. And what we see is that Ted is the eldest son, and he has been trying to become a politician like his father, and he has failed. He was not able to be elected governor of New York. He was embroiled in this terrible scandal, the Teapot Dome scandal, where bribes were being taken in exchange for leasing oil lands. And so at the time that he is starting this expedition, he's at a low point in his life, and he is very much looking to recapture some of his father's legacy. And we see this with Kermit as well. Kermit is struggling with his business. He's not successful, and he's having difficulties in his home life too. But both brothers are always bonded when they go out into nature and in the woods. And this is something that their father really taught them. And even though he could be very hard on his sons, he also was very loving with them. You know, he was the kind of dad that would get down on the floor and play with them. He wrote them affectionate letters. He told them many times how much he loved them. And then the other side of that is that he did stress how important it was for them to be strong. Ted, we see when he was 10 years old, ended up having a near nervous breakdown because of his father's pressure. And Kermit also really went through some very difficult times with his father. So in 1928, when they're going on this expedition, they are looking to reclaim some of that glory. They want to do something that they know would make their father proud. Fascinating, really. He could really dive into the psychology a lot of how that drove them on. Were they hunters like their dad? They absolutely were. And Kermit had accompanied his father on several expeditions. So they went and hunted mammals in Africa. And he also went with him on the River of Doubt expedition in South America in 1912. And that, of course, was a very famous expedition that was quite deadly. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt almost died on that expedition. And so he, both brothers had experience. Kermit had more experience in the wilds than his brother, but both sons had had much experience in the woods hunting animals. Hmm. And probably had this notion of, I know that on one of those expeditions, President Roosevelt, after his presidency, right, went to Africa on one of these safaris. And I heard that they collected like 11,000 specimens, you know, from insects to big game, including elephants and hippos and shot a lot of creatures, brought them back dead. So this must have gone into the minds of the sons. And you say especially Kermit, was it, that was accompanying them on these things. Do you think that sort of set their mindset in terms of what conservation was through the eyes of their dad? It was like, yeah, well, we shoot animals and bring them home because that's the best way to help them or understand them. Is that safe to say? Yes. It's hard for us to wrap our minds around this. But at this point in time, conservation biology relied on hunting. Every scientist who was working for these museums hunted animals in order for the museum to be able to study them. In fact, they would even hunt endangered animals. and the thinking at the time was that these animals were going to die anyway. Nature had made its choice. And so it was better to have the animals be studied and to be marked in the history of mammology than to just have them all perish by themselves. And it's really hard for us to understand, but this was really the thinking at the time. And so Teddy Roosevelt defended himself vigorously on this topic. He said, I can only be condemned if the natural history museums of the world can be condemned. And he really felt that these trips, these hunting trips, were central to us understanding biology. And of course, so many of the specimens that were collected, as crazy as it seems, it wasn't all for exhibits. Most of these animals were actually studied by scientists who then used them for evolutionary biology and to understand more about these creatures at a time when we simply didn't have the technology to study them any other way. Right. Good point. Very early days in terms of what was possible. This was the way it was done. This was the modern face of conservation back in the day. It's hard to believe, but you have to remember that perspective, I suppose. Now, had others tried to find the panda before these guys? Dozens of expeditions went out to find the panda in China after 1919. After that exhibition took place in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History, there were so many explorers who thought, okay, the panda's out there, and we're going to be the ones to find it. And everyone knew that whoever found the panda first would gain immediate fame. It would just become a sensation. And so that's why it was such a surprise that a decade passes without anyone finding the panda, despite how many people had gone to China searching for it. Just sort of building the mystique around it. Absolutely. So by the time they came around to it it was like the story was kind of out of control and we got to go So they decided to go on this scientific expedition I thought it was interesting that they go out to find the giant panda and it funded by Chicago field museums And I think the fact that the museum was paying for the expedition is important because it sort of gets to the thinking around conservation in this era. and you touched upon a minute ago but how were scientists and naturalists really viewing conservation back then at the beginning of the 20th century? So scientists out in the field would find animals that they thought were unusual but they couldn't really know how this fit in with the greater knowledge of biology until it was brought back to the museum and so this expedition for example that the Roosevelt's undertook they brought back thousands of small animals they brought back 40 large mammals and they discovered 19 new species. On the trip to go and find the giant panda. That's right. Just like happened to stumble across 19 new species on the way. There was some work involved and he was just stumbling around. Wake up in the morning and there it is outside the tent. So they set out to do just that, find this mysterious black and white bear and kill it in the name of science, into some pretty gnarly territory, I understand, right? Where did they head to? Can you place this on a map? Yes. So they are heading to China and Tibet. And so they go in through what was then called Burma, which is today Myanmar. And this is called the back door of China. And so they're going on this one very small, narrow trail that goes in this back door. And then they are constantly crisscrossing the border between Tibet and China throughout southwestern China. And they're traveling more than a thousand miles. They're going through a diverse range of environments. They go through tropical jungles. They are in the snowy Himalayas. They then reach the Tibetan Plateau. It is so many different environments, so many different cultures. They see so much on the trail. And I think what is remarkable is that you have this trail that is more than a thousand miles. There are no cars. Everyone is traveling by foot. And all the goods that are going to this region are all traveling by foot as well. So they talk about how tea is transported. They're constantly seeing people that have huge loads, hundreds of pounds of tea. They're holding on their backs to transverse the mountains and bring tea to these communities. So, you know, China at that time is so different than today. And so it was really remarkable to look at what it was like, what people they met, what animals they found, and all of these different environments they went through. It must have been an incredible journey of discovery personally for them, but not without its trials and tribulations that you talk about in your book. Can you recall a couple of them? There was something about bandits. There are so many. Oh, such a difficult trip, certainly far more difficult than the Roosevelt's expected. And part of the reason for that is that China at this time is in the midst of a civil war. There is many contested regions that China is fighting for. There are autonomous regions that are controlled by Tibetans, which were a diverse group who practiced different religions, had different cultures, had different languages, all throughout the trail where the Roosevelt's traveled. And so it's in a state of uproar as they're traveling. And so there is one point where they are attacked by bandits. And what I found remarkable is that they are saved by a group of women. And these women served as guides. They were sort of like the Sherpa people of Nepal. So they would make the trail. They would help find the way. They would set up camp. They were really good at traveling through the mountains. And it just happens that half of their guides were women. And so during this one period where they are attacked by bandits, it is actually a group of women that end up circling around the bandits, taking one of their mules, whipping it in its rear. and it then flies off and they're able to then go pursue the bandits, track them down and keep them from attacking them again. It's really an exciting moment on the trail that this happens. I mean, the giant panda store is pretty good, but let's talk about the bandits more. That's insane. And all up at this high elevation, right? Altitude sickness, I'm sure. And perhaps Jardia or, you know, other, just other obstacles of the day. Absolutely. So traveling through the Himalayas, these are high elevations they're going through. They're snowy mountain passes. They're transversing 17,000-foot peaks. I mean, really, they're going very high up in the snow. And they got a very serious case of altitude illness. And they are just gasping for breath in their sleep. They would wake up every few minutes just gasping for air. And at the same time, they end up losing a number of their mules because the conditions are so bad. There are these blizzard conditions in the Himalayas that the mules decide to just abandon camp. And they still are carrying all of their food. Nightmare. Yeah. And so they're using mules along the trail to help carry their supplies, their food, and the specimens they're collecting. And at night, they didn't want to take all of the food off because they were using it sort of as insulation for the animals. And so when the mules run off, they are more than a week away from the nearest town and they have no food. I mean, things are looking bleak. It does not seem as if they will possibly get through this. And they're rescued by a group of llamas. So these are Tibetan monks who live in llamas areas in these remote regions of the Himalayas. And they serve often as doctors in these areas during that period of time. And so they were able to take in the Roosevelt, feed them, patch up their jackets with their own yellow robes. And they really are very kind to the Roosevelt. And the only reason they survive at all is because of these llamas in Tibet. And probably not because they were famous, right? I'm sure the llamas in Tibet had never heard of the Roosevelt family. Yes, I found this so interesting as I was researching the book. because I was fortunate to have the Roosevelt's letters and journals, and I was really able to get into the writings. And there is this really great moment where they are in Mulai, which is an autonomous region that's in Tibet. And they are meeting with a prince there who is just a young boy. He's just a toddler, and he is going to become the next king of Mulai. And so they're speaking with his father, and they're telling him who they are. and they're explaining that they're the sons of President Theodore Roosevelt. And this man just looks at them and says, okay, who's that? And it's just, it's such a great moment because that, you know, for them, what I found in their writings was this was so refreshing for them. This was really the first time that they were able to travel to a place where there were no preconceived notions about who they were. They were really able to make their own way. And they made very good friends with this man. Liberating. Yeah, it was a liberating feeling for them. Absolutely. After the break, Kermit and Ted Jr. continue their journey of scientific discovery through the rugged Himalayan mountains. And then they finally come face to face with the mythical giant panda. Everything is expensive in Seattle. But when it comes to restaurants, I got a lot of tricks and tips up my sleeve to help diners eat well in the city. I'm Tom Venn, host of Seattle Eats, a food podcast from the Seattle Times and KUOW, part of the NPR Network. I'll share about the latest buzz in the Seattle food scene, like the hottest openings and the best bites that are worth your money. Listen now to Seattle Eats on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts. hey wild listeners thanks for listening to the wild we're so happy you're here if you want more wild content you can visit our patreon you can find extended interviews there with our favorite guests and polls for you to participate in and conversations with my friend ken about behind the scenes moments of making the wild and so much more there's an easy link to patreon in the show notes of this episode or you can just search for chris morgan wildlife on patreon okay back to the show. So the giant pandas, they're focused, but they were also, back to what you were saying a minute ago, documenting other species that they found along the way. What did that work look like? Could you just tell us what they were finding and how that must have felt going into a world of discovery like that in some ways? Certainly, they're collecting a wide range of species, and there's some really fun ones in the book. One of them is the Himalayan snowball plant, which you need to look up a picture because it basically just looks like a sea anemone that is planted in the snow. It looks so bizarre. It comes in these strange purple and green colors. And so they were collecting plants like that, but also birds, insects, small mammals, and large mammals. So they were looking for the golden monkeys, for example, which is a beautiful species that has long golden fur and a bright blue face. They found animals like the surau and the sambar, which are very unusual. One is sort of a goat-like creature. The other is kind of a deer. And so all of these interesting species that really hadn't been well-described before, and some of them were new species, one of them was actually named after them. It's Roosevelt's Barking Deer. And what I found so poignant was that many of these species that they discovered on the trail are gone today. They have already disappeared. Within 100 years, we've already lost species that we had just discovered. Wow, perhaps species. It really speaks to the fragility of these animals and plants, doesn't it? It really does. And perhaps less charismatic species than the giant panda, which luckily is still around and perhaps partly because of this expedition, ironically, right? But I guess, you know, you say something in your book, and I loved it. I've got it written down. They were documenting a vanishing world, even if they could not yet appreciate it. Amazing, right, that they were in it and perhaps sensing that, but also not really getting the gravity of the things that they were seeing necessarily and so many new things to science, I suppose. So there was an English naturalist named Herbert Stevens who joined the expedition. Can you describe him a bit? What was his role in the group? Herbert Stevens is the real scientist on the trip. This is the man with the PhD who is very well trained in how to identify species. Unfortunately, this also makes him quite a bit slower on the trail. And he talks about this in his writings as well. So I was able to get the writings and journals and letters from each member of the expedition. And so it really allowed me to recreate these scenes in a lot of detail. And I loved reading Herbert's stories on the trail because he's always talking about how everyone else is hurrying, but he has to go slow, which of course frustrates people. And the very first day on the trail, Herbert gets lost. He steps off the trail and no one can find him. Everyone is searching for him, calling out his name. They finally find him just dozens of miles away. He's somehow gotten all the way to the river. It's already nightfall. And he's made a friend, though, that ends up being helpful to the expedition. No way. So he's just such an interesting mix of silliness. He's always doing silly things on the trail. He kind of fumbles with chopsticks and embarrasses the Roosevelt's. But then he discovers all of these interesting species. He is very interested in the mountain ranges because nobody knows what the elevation of these mountains are. And so he's really curious to explore that more. Perfect picture. He sounds like the classic old sort of befuddled nerdy naturalist. Probably got lost following his magnifying glass around the forest, right? You know, suddenly he's miles from anywhere. I love that. I can relate. The group came across a big expanse of rice paddies once, and there were hundreds of cranes bathing and splashing in the fields that you describe. And Herbert and the Roosevelt's had sort of different ideas about what to do with the cranes. What happened when they approached the birds? Herbert was very protective over birds and especially cranes. He absolutely loved cranes. And so they come across a group of psorias cranes. And the scientific name for these animals is Antigone, Antigone, because it has this red mark across its throat. And everyone is getting ready to shoot these cranes. And Herbert gets very angry. Unusually so. He is not usually that forceful. But in this case, he is. And he insists that everyone put down their weapons. He does not allow a single person to shoot. He loves these cranes. And he feels very strongly that they need to be protected. And did it work? They didn't shoot the cranes? They did not shoot the cranes, yes. And it you know I talk a bit about these cranes in the book because this is a species that has very much struggled in the past few decades Its numbers have declined immensely They are far rare now than they used to be And it was so remarkable to read about a time when they were plentiful, when they were across the trail, when they were seeing these cranes. It must have been really beautiful. And there's some depth to that as well because I know Herbert wrote about these cranes as indicator species, didn't he? You know, one of the first people to use that kind of language, I bet. Why did he describe them that way? Yes. So he was looking at different animals and how they respond to the environment. So addressing this idea of an indicator species so that when one species is struggling in an environment, it says something about the health of the environment itself. And nobody really had described source cranes in those terms before. So it was very early on. He was really looking at the interaction between the animals he was studying and the environment in a way that is unusual. When you look at his papers, they're very different from others during that time. And I think it says a lot about how much time he spent in the field. Because for other scientists of that era, they were often simply sending out hunters that then would send species back. They would then write papers based on that information. But they weren't seeing the animals themselves in their environment. So Herbert Stevens was doing something different. I think that's why he made such a mark in this era of conservation biology. I bet he loved Darwin for the same reasons, right? Yes, absolutely. Analyzing species in situ as opposed to hides and mounted animals or animals in zoos. Yeah, a whole different thing, hey? Okay, back to the pandas. We talked earlier about how people were imagining them at the time, sort of fierce and aggressive and maybe huge, giant pandas, right? I mean, it kind of conjures up a 10-foot bear, doesn't it? But what can you tell us about the reality of a panda's life history? Where does it live? What does it eat? You must have learned so much about these creatures researching for this book, because I know you're someone who really digs deep into the research. You must have learned so much about them. What are they about? What's the life of a panda like on a daily basis and what are they eating and doing just in a nutshell? Oh there's so much interesting panda biology I was able to incorporate in the book. I loved learning about pandas for the book and what I found interesting was following the Roosevelt's on their trail for this species because they would find some really interesting marks but not really understand what it meant. But today we have the studies to understand what it means. So for example, they would see that the pandas were scratching on trees, and then they would notice that there was rubbing on those trees, but they didn't understand what this behavior was. Today, we understand that pandas do this to communicate. They will scratch, they will rub glands on trees, and this is how they meet each other. And this is because pandas are a very solitary species. they live alone for most of their lives. And in this way, by being able to do scent communication, they can meet each other before they mate. And so it was really interesting to look at all of the different behaviors and especially, of course, how they live in this very remote area, these high elevation bamboo forests. And at this time, when the Roosevelt's are traveling to find them, these forests are incredibly difficult to get to. There are no roads there. And this area is controlled by people who are known as the Yi people. And they are protective. They do not like the Chinese. They do not consider themselves Chinese. They have a very different culture, different traditions, different language. And so they are protective of their space. And so many naturalists had warned the Roosevelt's, do not go to this area. These people are savages. They will kill you. And what the Roosevelt's find, of course, is that they are really the savages. They are the ones that are coming into this area. They're very well treated by people there. And they end up pursuing this bear that is completely different than what they expected. It's not surprising. It sounds like by the end of this expedition, it had been so life altering. But we'll get to that because it's remarkable, the things that they encountered and the sort of revelations along the way, it sounds like. Absolutely fascinating. And I know they were going from – so was this – I loved the phrase the land of ye. Is that what it's called, this area that you're talking about? Yes. So many Westerners called it Lolo land, which is – it's considered a derogatory term today. It's kind of unclear. or some people would consider it derogatory at that time. Some people wouldn't. But it was a very distinct culture of people, and many other scientists were worried about them. They really were concerned that the Roosevelt's would try to go there. And in fact, the Roosevelt's did not go to this area until they were desperate, until they were at the end of the expedition. They had not found the panda anywhere. They had failed over and over again to find the panda. And it was only at the end that they decided to take the risk to go there. they expected that they would immediately be in danger and instead what they found was a group of people who at first were suspicious of them because they had these long beards and so they were really worried that these were some catholic priests who are coming to convert them but when they learned that no these are not priests then they were very welcoming and they warned the Roosevelt's, they told them, the panda is a gentle animal. We do not find it often. We don't hunt it. But the Roosevelt's didn't listen. You know, they had this own idea of what they thought the panda was going to be. And so a group of V-hunters ended up taking the Roosevelt's out to look for the panda. And they did so not because they wanted to hunt the panda, which was not something they did in their culture whatsoever, but because they thought, we won't see one anyway. It's so rare that we see these bears so we'll take these guys out we'll go hunting you know for a few weeks get some money and then be done and what happened and what happens is the unexpected is that they come across signs of a panda they come across one of these scratchings in the tree that has black and white fur in it they know it's a panda that has been there and then they start seeing the signs of the panda trail and the yee hunter stop in their tracks and they say no we're not going on we're not going to hunt these panda you can imagine how the roosevelts feel at this point they have been searching for this panda for eight months at this point they're like what we're finally here um and it takes a lot of convincing and some of the hunters will not go no matter what it doesn't matter what they're promised they leave but the others decide to move ahead and as they approach the panda there is just this really tense feeling you can imagine what it's like ted and kermit are trying to move forward. It's snowing, which is helping them track this animal. And they finally end up seeing it poke its head out of a giant dragon spruce tree. And this is the moment where both Roosevelt's end up holding up their rifles and shooting at the bear. They expect that it's going to turn around and attack them. Instead, of course, the panda is merely trying to escape. and what I found that in this, this is a part of the book that was very difficult to write about and I'm sure it's hard to read about, but they do, of course, end up killing this panda. They bring it back to Chicago. What I found when I was reading the Roosevelt's writings is how much they regretted their actions almost immediately. Almost immediately they called the panda a gentleman. It wasn't the bear they were expecting and their feelings about the panda, their regret about what happens ends up deepening as time goes on and unintended consequences pile up. Take us back to that moment, the very moment though. Was it that immediate, do you think, when they raised their rifles and shot the panda that they started to think, oh, wait a minute, this doesn't feel right? Do you think it was that immediate? Kermit writes that it is when the bear does not aggressively charge at them. That's the moment where they're surprised. It's not what they expected. and as they're watching this bear's behavior as they trail him through the jungle, they understand that this is not an aggressive creature, that the Yi people had been telling them all along, this is not an animal that is going to attack you, and now they finally understand that's true. And so it's sort of the feeling of getting everything that you wanted, but it doesn't really work out how you thought it would. After the break, what happens when the Roosevelt brothers get home with their trophy panda? Yes, they got the fame that they'd been hoping for, but the twist comes when they decide on a new expedition, one to save the panda. Northwest winters bum you out. You may be suffering from the big dark, but there is a solution. I'm Dire Oxley telling you to talk to your podcast app about Meet Me Here, KUOW's arts podcast, a weekly dose of events and culture to lighten up your life. Side effects of Meet Me Here include laughter, curiosity, and inspiration. Find Meet Me Here on your local KUOW app or wherever you get your podcast. Kermit and Theodore Jr. came back to the States in 1929. For the first time, a taxidermied giant panda, their giant panda, is on display at the Chicago Field Museum. Finally, proof that the panda exists. You'd think that the brothers would be pretty thrilled. The fame and notoriety they'd set out to find along with the panda was theirs. But the regret they felt after that fateful gunshot only continued to grow. And word was out. That trail to find the pandas in China is now known to the Western world. And that brings a whole lot of unwanted attention to the shyest bear species in the world. And so hunters begin to travel to China to find the panda. It's considered the most challenging trophy animal on earth. You can imagine how Ted and Kermit end up feeling about this. And then also you have Americans and other Westerners who are now traveling to China and trying to capture cubs for zoos. So there is suddenly this pandemonium. Everyone is very excited about the panda. Pandemonium. Nice. I like how you slipped that in. Yeah. So it's really what happens next that really upsets the Roosevelt's and it's why they do what they do. It's why they really end up changing their lives and making some some big differences in the panda. And so literally the path that they took and the route that they took into finding this giant panda for the first time for the Western world, at least, you know, helped others follow. Were they using information literally from that expedition, the people who followed them afterwards? Absolutely. Yes, they would not have been able to find the panda without the maps from the expedition because this whole area had been unmapped. It wasn't on official maps from either China or from Westerners. And so the Roosevelt's map to where to find the panda then allowed all of these hunters and people looking for zoo animals to follow in their footsteps. And this is really what upset the Roosevelt's because they realized, oh my goodness, this is a rare animal. And now all of these hunters and others are coming to take them. And they knew. They write in their letters, they write in their journals about how upset they are about this. And, you know, we see it repeatedly how difficult it was for them. There's this one moment where Ted and Kermit are in a hotel in New York City, and they're sitting with Ruth Harkness, who is the first Westerner to have brought back a live panda cub. And so she's brought it back, thanks to the Roosevelt's, really, thanks to their map. And she's auctioning it off to different zoos. And Ted is holding this cub. And someone in the room says to him, oh, maybe one day this cub will sit alongside your panda in the field museum. And he says, I'd sooner stuff my own son. He is very upset. This is not how they thought things would work out. And it's really this moment that ends up changing them. And especially Kermit decides that he is going to work to make protections for the panda. And at that time, this is all new. The idea that you would make specific protections to not hunt a large animal because it's rare is just simply hasn't been done before. And there certainly have been plenty other animals. I talk in the book about otters and other animals that people believed had gone extinct and yet no protections were made to save them. The panda is different. And because they're able to make these protections for the panda, it ends up becoming a symbol of conservation. It's how we think of the panda today, right? Totally Everybody knows that WWF logo It sort of represents much more than WWF It represents conservation in general doesn it You know this species Well done for the people who helped to brand it And it sounds like it started with these guys right But why do you think it was different for the panda when it wasn't for so many other species? Otters are pretty charismatic, you know. Why was it different for pandas? It was different for pandas because, I mean, there's many reasons I think that you can look at. But certainly for the Roosevelt's, this was an animal that they felt personal responsibility for what happened because they had led the map to where hunters were going and where cubs were being stolen. And so Kermit ends up taking a position as the president of the Audubon Society. And he works directly with Chinese officials to make laws to stop all hunting and stop the ability for panda cubs to be exported to the United States. And there's certainly more that needs to be done. And I mean, in the decades ahead, there's a lot that happens in the history of panda conservation. But this is a huge step at the time. Nothing like this had been done before. And certainly there's a lot at work here. You have two very dedicated sons of a president known for conservation who are willing to work very hard to make this happen. And you also have an animal that itself is just innately charismatic. How can you not love a panda? It's a very sweet animal. It's really their work. And then, of course, the animal itself that made this successful. And today, you know, the protections that pandas have, they protect other species as well. They're sometimes called an umbrella species because the laws that we have put in place to protect the environment pandas live in helps protect other animals that live nearby. So these guys regret killing the panda. It sets off this pandemonium, as you call it. And immediately they start working with China. What was China of the day? Do you think that was an easy thing for them to walk up to the doors of the Chinese government and say, you guys need to protect these pandas? I mean, that alone seems quite colonial, doesn't it? But what do you think that relationship was between these brothers and the China of the day? Because that seems remarkable that they succeeded to get some kind of protection. I think it would be very difficult for anyone else to have done it. It helped that they had the connections. They knew people in the Chinese government and they knew Americans who were working with the Chinese government at that time. So they were able to help draft these laws and help work with the Chinese to do so because they were so passionate about it and because they had the right connections. Certainly, I think it would have been far more difficult for another group to come in and do this. And it wasn't perfect. I mean, I'm certainly not saying that from that moment on, pandas were protected in China because that's not the case. It was a remarkable first step. Yeah, it was a remarkable step to take at that time. To be doing this in the 1930s was really quite a big thing. And to be fair, my understanding at least is that China has played, of course, a very pivotal role. They're only found in China, this species, right, in just a small, tiny portion of their former range, right? But it's because of the Chinese government's commitment to this species. It's a matter of pride, right, to this day. They put a lot of money and a lot of research attention into this species. And right, I mean, we should praise the Chinese government for tackling this and taking on the protection of the species. Absolutely, especially because they faced so many challenges. You know, we see that in the 1970s, panda populations plummeted. there were less than a thousand bears left in the wild. This was a very perilous time for the panda and big changes needed to be made. And certainly the Chinese did a lot during that time. There were also Americans even then who were working to help the panda and to help research. So I think there has been this really close collaboration between American scientists and the Chinese government and Chinese scientists in protecting the panda. And what we see today is very broad protections for the habitat. There is controversy about how zoos operate and how animals are loaned out to zoos and what conditions they might be under. But certainly, it's far better than it was in the 1930s and 40s, where we see that every cub that was brought back to the United States zoos passed away very young. It's really heartbreaking to see what happened with pandas during that time. And you can imagine why the Roosevelt's felt so passionate about saving them. So when they came back, they had this sort of change of heart. Can you tell me anything more about the roles that they took on to try and shift things? And the Roosevelt brothers sort of went on a different path once they got back, hey, with the different jobs that they had or that push? They absolutely did. And you have to remember that they have been part of this Roosevelt family that has gone on expeditions, killed animals, brought them back. After the panda, that stops. They don't do that anymore. And we see them pursuing very different means of biology. So Kermit Roosevelt, for example, becomes involved with another member of the expedition named Sudam Cutting, who is a naturalist from New York. And they go on this trip to the Galapagos, where they decide to initiate a breeding program for the Galapagos tortoise, which is endangered. And instead of killing the animal, instead of bringing it back to zoos, they go there, they study the tortoise, and they make a breeding program that ended up being quite successful at helping augment numbers of the animal. He then takes a role as vice president at the New York Zoological Society, and then later as president. This is Kermit? This is Kermit, yes. And so in each of these roles, he begins doing more protections. He calls for a ban of duck hunting. He writes this column when he's president of the Audubon Society that is constantly looking for more protections for animals. And it's such a change of pace. You can really see in his writings from the time how important this became to him. So different than in the past. And Ted makes some changes, too. You know, this is a man who had hoped to become a politician like his father. Instead, he ends up going to Puerto Rico. He does become governor there for a very short amount of time. He then comes to New York City and becomes a publisher. He ends up editing books on China and having a really interesting role doing that. So both of them really kept part of this expedition in themselves. It really changed who they were and how they approached the world after this. It seems like the brothers sort of represent a changing time and a change in thinking at that time. And, you know, there was growing understanding that human activity could impact biodiversity and that we all had to be mindful of that. And the things that you talk about are so fascinating, whereas I protect the species where it is and you don't have to bring them all home. why was all this so revolutionary? It's hard for us to picture it as revolutionary today. Today it seems, well, of course, you don't have very many pandas. You would make protections for them. Of course, you wouldn't go and hunt all these animals from the woods that are rare species that you don't know anything about. But at that time, this was absolutely radical. This went against what so many scientists at the time believed and how museums operated at the time. So for Kermit and Ted to make these changes was a whole new era in conservation biology that they were starting. It was very different what they chose to do during this period. And they could have gone the other way. When they came home from China, they had many offers to go back and hunt pandas. People were willing to pay them a lot of money, especially museums. Even individuals really wanted them to go back and hunt more pandas. Wow. And they absolutely refused. They would never go hunt another panda again. They sound like admirable guys. How did this, am I right that their, would their father, President Roosevelt, would he have passed by then during the time of this expedition? Yes, yes. He had already passed. By many years? Do you know the chronology of that? Was it? Yes, he passed in 1919. So he was, it was during World War I. So this was 10 years later. Yeah, 10 years later. What do you think he would have made of all of this? And do you think that they were thinking that a lot, wondering what, oh, what would dad think? Absolutely. And they write about it very clearly that they were trying to follow in their father's legacy of conservation. And their father had become more interested in birds and in other smaller species in his later years. So I think they really were thinking about how they were moving the field forward, especially because their father was a radical environmentalist for the time. There was no one that did what Teddy Roosevelt did to protect land, to protect species. And so I do think they were motivated by that. It was a big part of how they saw themselves and who they wanted to be. What was the sort of after story for Ted and Kermit? did they go on to succeed long happy lives what did that look like i wish i could say that were the case unfortunately they both served in world war ii and ted ended up dying after d-day he was the oldest general who landed on the beaches of normandy he very famously stood on the beaches and said, we'll start the war right from here. Sadly, he was hiding a heart condition. And just a few days later, he died. And Kermit's ending is even sadder because what I found was that in the years after the panda, he became very depressed. And we see himself throwing into these projects that he's passionate about, he cares about. And yet there's a lot of sadness there. He was suffering from depression. He's suffering from alcoholism. I go into some detail about this in the book, but he ends up killing himself in 1943 in Alaska while serving during World War II. And it's just a very tragic end for both brothers. Intense lives all around from beginning to end. That is sad. Do you think that they'd feel that their ultimate mission paid off if they were here today looking back? I hope they would. You know, it's an interesting question how they would view their legacy. This is a story, obviously, that had not really been told before I wrote this book. It was a story that was mostly lost to history. And I think, you know, for Ted and Kermit, their history had mostly been framed by their father and by their work in the military. And so I hope that by telling this part of their story, I can tease out some of their own environmental legacy and how their work has contributed to conservation biology today in a way that perhaps most people wouldn't expect. Where do things stand with pandas today in China? How is the species doing? Pandas today have bounced back from their lows in the 1970s when there were less than a thousand bears in the wild. today that number hovers around 3 000 and what's interesting when i talked to scientists who are studying pandas today is they told me that it is just as difficult to find a bear in the wilderness today as it was in the roosevelt's time they said that is the most difficult part of doing these studies and finding the bears because they are so elusive they are so rare and i i just found that really fascinating. But it's heartening how people have come together from different countries, and China has made such a big show of force by having all of these protections for pandas and their habitats. And that's paid off. Pandas today are doing well. Dr. Nathalia Holt is the author of The Beast in the Clouds, the Roosevelt Brothers' deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda. thanks for listening to the wild if you like what you hear share it tell a friend about the podcast or leave us a rating and review it helps and don't miss an episode subscribe it's free and easy the wild is a production of kuaw in seattle and chris morgan wildlife with support from wildlife media matt martin produced this episode jim gates is our editor our theme music is by michael parker Additional music from Musicbed and Blue Dot Sessions. The Wild is hosted, produced and written by me, Chris Morgan. A very special thank you for their kind financial support to Jill and Scott Walker, Rose Letwin, Ellen Ferguson, the Isdell family, Anna Kimball, Barbara Stallman, John Taylor, Paul Lister, Bob Yellowlees and John and Julie Hanson. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourselves and nature so that nature can take care of you like she does every day. 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