The startling costs involved in procuring pandas for zoos have been laid bare in this month’s Attractions Management magazine, where a swot analysis finds that the complex process is far from black and white.

Experts estimate the cost of keeping two Pandas on a 10-year lease from China to be between US$15-30m (£9-18m, €11-28m), and that’s before you factor in the food bill for the estimated 18,000kg of specially-grown bamboo the pandas get through each year.

In addition to the financial undertaking, the arrangement is often highly politicised, with lengthy negotiations required at the highest level of government if zoos are to win Beijing’s approval.

“I spend most of my time discouraging various institutions from trying to go after pandas, unless they have a strong commitment and a really large chequebook,” says Dave Towne, president of the Giant Panda Conservation Foundation for North America.

For Towne, leasing a panda is more a labour of love than a calculated business decision.

Despite these sentiments, panda leasing is booming, with both Toronto and Edinburgh zoos gaining huge gate receipts and global media attention from their recent high-profile panda procurements.

Our business model regarding giant pandas has always been extremely conservative,” says Iain Valentine, director of pandas at Edinburgh Zoo, where the star attractions recently received their millionth visitor just two years after arriving from China.

“To date, we’ve not seen any tail off in interest and we’ve bucked the trend for a panda zoo in year two.”

The article, which appears in the latest edition of Attractions Management, charts the history of panda leasing, right back to its origins as a brainwave of Chairman Mao’s to establish diplomatic relations.

It also examines the unique position pandas hold in world culture, why Fedex are involved in transporting them and talks to conservationists on the ground in China about the effects on native panda populations.

To read the full piece, click here.