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Biologist: Panda Exhibit Offers Good Opportunity to Educate

LAS VEGAS - He refers to the approach as sneak attack education, a way to educate people who have little interest science.

So when John Nightingale considers the prospects for a giant panda exhibit at Mandalay Bay, he softly chuckles.

"That's exactly why when Mandalay talked to us about managing the development ... we jumped at it," said the president of the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Center.

"You do it in a format that people enjoy the heck out of it, and they don't even know they're learning something, and that's the best way. When I say sneak attack, yeah, we sneak up on them."

Mandalay Resort Group executives continued Tuesday to remain mum about their efforts to seek the permission of the U.S. and Chinese governments to house a panda exhibit at the company's flagship property.

Instead, they referred all questions about the proposal to Rogich Communications, a Las Vegas-based public relations firm known for its links to local, state and national political figures, including President Bush.

"There's a great potential to educate lots of people who normally wouldn't be zoo visitors and for them to make contributions to China for the preservation of the species," said Rogich account executive Megan Rose.

Nightingale and his staff oversee the day-to-day operations of Mandalay Bay's 2-year-old Shark Reef aquarium, a glass-dominated environment they helped design. An estimated 2 million people have since visited the aquarium at the south end of the megaresort, helping generate additional foot traffic for the relatively isolated hotel-casino.

A Mandalay panda exhibit would extend Nightingale's concept of "sneak attack" learning by focusing on the environmental and political challenges facing the world's estimated 1,000 pandas, all of which are in China.

"They're an icon for all of the endangered species in the world," he said. "That lets us talk about what's going on (for them), as well as endangered species in Nevada."

In recent days, the salmon biologist has been involved in the rescue of a killer whale that strayed into central Puget Sound near Seattle, about 340 miles from her native waters.

The effort has received a great deal of news media attention in the region, leaving Nightingale with limited time to discuss Mandalay's panda push.

He has been working on the concept for the past six months after the idea was broached by Mandalay General Counsel Yvette Landau, whose assistant referred a Tuesday phone message to Rogich's Rose.

"There's an interest in conservation in that organization," Nightingale said. "When we worked on planning Shark Reef they went through a couple of tries of getting it developed and they kept shaking their heads saying, 'No this isn't it.'

"When they started talking about pandas I didn't have any problem. I assumed they were serious, and they are."

Preliminary plans call for a $10 million investment to build a glass-domed habitat that would sit near the Shark Reef, not far from Mandalay Bay's soon-to-open 1.8-million-square-foot convention center. The exhibit would have a separate entrance so visitors could come and go without walking through the property's casino.

Like the operators of panda exhibits at zoos in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and San Diego, Mandalay Resort Group would pay $1 million to $1.5 million annually to the Chinese government for the right to house two giant pandas at Mandalay Bay for a minimum of 10 years.

Two weeks ago, Nightingale attended a Las Vegas meeting with some of the nation's top environmental figures who would likely have to give their OK to a Mandalay panda project for it to be approved by U.S. government leaders.

The tone of that gathering has left him optimistic about the proposals' prospects for success.

"You know in Las Vegas things are developed quickly," he said, "so we would like to speed up the process. It could be two or three years out especially if we're good at building our collaborations."

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