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How Robert Young Bamboo Prevented a Christmas Catastrophe

The lowly equipment trailer remains an important farm tool for hauling mulch, containerized bamboo, water tanks, and more. On Christmas Eve, 2007, a heavy flatbed trailer popped loose from the farm tractor moving it and began rolling out of control toward Richard's 1957 Chevrolet.

The run-away trailer was stopped by a small stand of Robert Young bamboo! Several culms were broken or uprooted, but the bamboo saved the classic Chevy.

To commemorate this Christmas bamboo miracle, Argo Bamboo Farm now donates $20.07 to a Christmas charity from every sale of Robert Young bamboo.

The London Times published this feature, by Jacqui Goddard, about our own Atlanta pandas:

April 10, 2007

Lun Lun was named by a Taiwanese rock star. As she lazes in a woven hammock, her feet upturned and her mouth stretching into a yawn, the crowd of fans clamouring outside her air-conditioned suite is a clue that she, too, is a celebrity. She and her baby daughter, Mei Lan, and partner, Yang Yang, are probably Atlanta's most famous residents, megastars with expensive tastes and combined expenses of $2 million a year.

As members of an elite and dwindling club — Ailuropoda melanoleuca , or giant panda — their every gastronomical whim is Zoo Atlanta's command. But few of those who make the pilgrimage to the zoo's Panda Veranda realise quite how intricate an operation it is to keep Lun Lun and her family happy, and their stomachs full. The question of how to cater for a panda's nutritional needs is not a black-and-white issue.

Just like a picky child or a fussy gourmand, the animals are not afraid to turn up their noses at what is put in front of them. Though 95 per cent of their diet is bamboo, they will eat only 20 of the 200 species grown in the US and, after feasting for weeks on one kind, will suddenly decide that they no longer like it, refusing further helpings. Weeks later, they may be back eating that variety with gusto.

Kate Roca, one of the zoo's three panda keepers, says: "It may seem as though they are spoilt, but we must accept that there is some biological reason for their fussiness. Over the years we've kept a record of what they eat, and when; just when we think we have a pattern, they change it."

Zoo Atlanta keeps a data-base of more than 1,000 householders around the state of Georgia willing to donate bamboo from their gardens, noting details of which variety they grow and how much they have. A full-time team of four "bamboo harvesters" is dispatched each morning, five days a week, to chop fresh supplies, driving thousands of miles a year to keep the menu stocked in accordance with the animals' dietary fads.

No one knows why have such particular palates, although it is thought that bamboo's taste and sugar content may vary according to the conditions in which it is grown. They might happily tuck into bamboo plucked from one person's garden, but reject the same variety from another's. Roca is a qualified zoologist who, as a former waitress, knows all about dealing with finicky customers. "We work closely with the bamboo guys to find something the pandas like," she says. "Every day we discuss how well they're eating and the game plan for the next few days. The guys do really well at keeping a minimum of two species of bamboo in stock so that we're prepared for surprises."

Today the harvesting team has travelled 25 miles out of Atlanta to cut yellow groove bamboo from a garden for Lun Lun and Yang Yang. The seven-month-old Mei Lan, who weighed 4oz at birth and is now 27 lbs, is still on her mother's milk and will not start nibbling bamboo for at least six months, so for now the daily order is 227 lbs. That covers the two adults, with a little left for elephants and gorillas. Even after the zoo workers have worked out what variety the pandas want and sourced it from their donor list, the challenges don't end. There are regular brushes with fire ants, wasps, poison ivy and rash-inducing thorns. On occasion they have been challenged by suspicious locals with guns, and a wild boar once took exception to their presence and gave chase.

Quality control is crucial and the bamboo is inspected before it is cut — it must not be growing near a polluted waterway, for example, and stems with shrivelled or wilted leaves are out. The use of chainsaws is banned.

Rytis Daujotas, the head of the animal nutrition kitchen, explains: "Oil and gas from the power tools would be like poison for the animals, so we have handsaws and disinfect them every day.

"We ask the donors, 'Did you spray anything on the bamboo, use any pesticides?' If they did, we can't use it. We don't take it if it grows close to a main road because of contamination, or if there are a lot of bird droppings on it."

All produce used at the zoo has to be "human grade". Trolleys full of fresh fruit and vegetables — from onions to oranges, carrots to kiwi fruit — are wheeled into the animal nutrition kitchen each day for preparation on immaculate stainless-steel tables. Rows of buckets are lined up at the ready, marked with labels such as "sloth" and "wallabies", ready to be filled and delivered to the zoo's 800-plus residents. Written on a wallboard and in files are notes relating to important matters, such as that Ivan the gorilla requires a special helping of boiled vegetables, and that Vernon the wart-hog is moving pens. There are pots of live crickets and cock-roaches for the reptiles and a walk-in cold store whose shelves are laden with frozen delicacies including rats, horse meat for the birds of prey and fish lollipops for the otters.

On returning to the zoo, the bamboo hunters weigh their haul, then deliver it to the Panda Veranda, from which the keepers feed Lun Lun and Yang Yang every three hours. They eat only around a third of what is given to them each day, but the extra is necessary so that they can choose the tastiest, freshest shoots, eating for three hours at a time, then sleeping for two. The elephants are not so choosy and get to finish off the leftovers.

After they arrived at the zoo in 1999, having been flown from China on an aircraft dubbed the Panda Express, Lun Lun and Yang Yang sparked a record surge in zoo attendance levels. They were escorted from the air-port to the zoo in a "Panda-cade" — a fleet of vehicles carrying US and Chinese dignitaries — and installed on the Panda Veranda under the watchful lens of a Pandacam, which allows admirers to see them online. They even have their own merchandise at Pandamonium, a shop dedicated just to them. It sells everything from cuddly panda toys, keyrings, badges, and clocks to psychedelic tie-dyed T-shirts sporting the motif "Peace, Love and Mei Lan".

In the streets outside the zoo banners ripple from lamp-posts bearing photographs of the cub and her mum. Her public debut has renewed interest in Zoo Atlanta, which limits visitors to 15 minutes each on the Panda Veranda to keep the crowd moving, and the institution predicts that at- tendance levels will rise by almost 30 per cent this year thanks to her arrival. Yet the ever-increasing cost of keeping her and her parents is becoming unmanageable. All giant pandas in zoos are "on lease" from the Chinese Government, which demands an annual fee in return, to fund panda research and conservation projects; Zoo Atlanta has to pay $1.1 million a year for the honour of keeping Lun Lun and Yang Yang.

With all the associated costs, such as the bamboo-collecting operation, the annual bill for Atlanta's panda programme totals $2 million. Mei Lan must be sent to China when she is 3 so that she can mate and expand the gene pool of this still endangered species, of which there are just 1,600 in the wild. But if the Chinese Government does not agree to reduce its fees when her parents' lease comes up for renewal in 2009, she may not be the only one on the flight.

Susan Elliott, the zoo's PR director, says: "These animals are ambassadors. By having them here, we are teaching new generations about the importance of saving them in the wild. And it makes sense that to have pandas here we have to give money back for research. But at this level it's not sustainable over the long term."

If they go home to China, they will be sorely missed. They receive fan mail, Christmas cards, Valentine's Day messages and birthday greetings from young wellwishers. "It must have been hard for you to have all that fur and be in labour for 35 hours," reads a note sent to Lun Lun after she gave birth. Another says: "I want the panda to live for a very long time."

But one letter displayed outside their enclosure sums up the vulnerability of the world's most-expensive, high-maintenance, fussy-eating — but popular — zoo animal. "I'm happy that you are here," it says, "even though you may have to go back with your baby. Your friend, Breanna."

No pandering to legend, just the facts:

1. An estimated 1,600 pandas remain in the wild, and 127 in zoos in China, North Korea, the United States, Mexico, Japan and Germany.
2. Daxiongmao, the Chinese name, means "large bear-cat".
3. The panda's diet consists almost solely of 20lb (9kg)-30lb of bamboo shoots and leaves a day
4. Pandas do not hibernate.
5. Pandas will often tumble and roll in a somersault.
6. They can climb trees and swim.
7. Pandas are solitary creatures that rarely socialise, and then usually only for mating.
8. A female panda is in heat for only 72 hours a year.
9. The length of the panda's gestation period is not known. After fertilisation, the embryo does not implant itself into the uterine wall immediately but floats around the mother's reproductive tract for months. Once the embryo implants, a baby is born, scientists estimate, after eight weeks. A 200lb mother's offspring may weigh barely a quarter of a pound (114g).
10. The species is more than 3 million years old and is considered a living fossil.
11. Far from being quiet, reserved animals, pandas bleat, roar, growl and honk.
12. Scientists are uncertain why pandas are black and white. Some experts think that the colours, like the stripes of a zebra, may help them to blend into their shade-dappled snowy and rocky surroundings.

Sources: World Wildlife Fund, San Diego Zoo, Smithsonian National Zoo

Compared to speakers with conventional diaphragms that use paper made from softwood, bamboo speakers have a wider sound range and crisper treble.

Bamboo is lighter and harder than softwood, making it a suitable material for speaker diaphragms. To maintain the ideal properties of bamboo, high-speed grindstones are used instead of chemicals (which can cause some properties to be lost) to break the bamboo down into fiber.

Panasonic hopes to put the speakers on the market at the end of 2007. The speakers are expected to cost double that of conventional speakers, but the company claims that using bamboo can play a role in resource conservation because it grows faster than softwood. The company hopes to establish bamboo as a mainstream material for speakers.

March 21, 2007:

A new species of North American bamboo was recently discovered by Iowa State University and University of North Carolina botanists, making it the third known native species of the hardy grass in the United States. The "hill cane" was discovered in the Appalachian Mountains. It's different from the other two native species of bamboo, which were discovered more than 200 years ago, because it drops its leaves in the fall.

"We tend to think that we ... know our own biodiversity, and that there isn't much left to discover in a place like the United States. I think this demonstrates that that's not true," said Lynn Clark, an ISU professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology.

She said that she and Ph.D. student Jimmy Triplett were first tipped off that this might be a different type of bamboo by University of North Carolina botanist Alan Weakley. They drove to the mountains to see the plant, which locals knew about but hadn't been recognized for its distinctiveness.

"We drove up, we got out of the car, we looked at it and went, 'Ah, it's different. This one doesn't have a name,'" she said.

Hill cane, or Arundinaria appalachiana, grows only to about 6 feet, compared with the other North American species _ river cane and switch cane _ which each can grow much taller and thicker.

"It's overall kind of a smaller plant ... and more delicate," said Clark, an international bamboo expert who has discovered 74 other new species, mostly throughout Central and South America.

While she doesn't think there are more native species of bamboo to be discovered in North America, she said there are many more to be sought out around the world.

"These are difficult plants to work with, so a lot of people ... don't pay much attention," she said. "When you do look at them, there is this incredible diversity."

So far, Clark said there are 1,400 species of bamboo classified around the globe, and that the plants play an important ecological role. She said people are becoming more interested in planting bamboo as part of re-vegetation projects because it can be used as habitat for many animals and prevent erosion.

Clark, Triplett and Weakley recently completed the process of officially naming and describing the newfound bamboo species, including preparing Latin and English descriptions as well as drawings. Their work appeared last fall in the journal "Sida, Contributions to Botany."

She and Triplett are studying North American bamboo as part of a larger worldwide project to develop an evolutionary family tree of bamboo species. Their work includes modern DNA sequencing and traditional plant taxonomy.

"It helps us understand better what the history of bamboo evolution has been," she said.