Authorities in China's Sichuan province have warned tourists of new regulations: travelers are now prohibited from approaching pandas, feeding them, or taking photographs with them.
As TASS reports, citing local media, in order to prevent such 24-hour surveillance cameras have been installed in nurseries across the region to detect violations.
According to Chinese law, tourists are not allowed to approach endangered or rare species. Only those responsible for their daily care—breeding staff, veterinarians, and biologists at the panda centers—are allowed to interact with the pandas. These measures are being implemented because the pandas could contract infections from tourists.
In the wild, in the mountains of Sichuan Province, there are only a little over 1,500 pandas left. Although experiments in breeding these mammals at a nursery have yielded some results, they have failed to achieve a decisive shift in increasing their population.
Source: trn-news.ru