Kerre Woodham: Extinction of panda a bear truth

Finally. I've been saying this for years but I have no doubt the words of a BBC wildlife presenter will carry more weight than mine.

Chris Packham has called for the money that goes to support the preservation of pandas to be put towards more deserving animals. Pandas, says Packham, have gone down an evolutionary cul-de-sac and it's time they were allowed to die out with dignity.

Packham's been roundly abused for his comments but I have some sympathy for him. I know that man has devastated the traditional happy hunting grounds of the panda and pandas are also the victims of poachers and for that we humans must be culpable, but if your traditional bamboo source is no longer available, wouldn't you branch out?

Wouldn't you adapt your digestive system to another sort of bamboo so you could stay alive?

It's like UN food agencies turning up at a refugee camp and being told by the starving and desperate that while they appreciated the bread they were wheat-intolerant and would the UN mind rustling up a gluten-free loaf or two and thanks all the same for the milk powder, but we're allergic to dairy.

The pandas' inability or unwillingness to breed hasn't helped them either. Zoos have resorted to all sorts of tricks to try to get pandas to mate, including showing one disinterested male panda porn in an attempt to get him interested in the female they'd brought in, but nope. Not a sausage.

The only thing pandas have got going for them is that they are desperately cute. And according to Chris Packham, that's kept them alive for far longer than they've deserved.