Club Meeting

On 29th April, the Rotary Club of South Queensferry welcomed Forbes Howie to the its virtual meeting. Forbes is a fellow Rotarian, currently President of the Corstorphine Rotary Club, and he brought greetings from his club to   President Irene Brownless and the members. His talk was entitled 'It isn't all black and white.' Very appropriate as his work at Edinburgh Zoo concerned how best to get the panda Tian Tian pregnant.

Forbes worked at the University of Edinburgh Centre for Reproductive Health. After the arrival of the couple of pandas from China in 2011, he joined Edinburgh Zoo. The zoo is very keen on conservation in nature and staff were hoping the two pandas would breed naturally. There were several false alarms, and though Tian Tian showed signs of being pregnant, she never carried it through successfully. In 2014 Forbes and the team began taking urine samples from the female. As she was not happy with humans around her, they had to be collected from the floor. They then tried artificial insemination with sperm from her mate Yang Wong, but  she has never fallen pregnant. Forbes has now retired and his assistant is carrying on the work. Among other elements in attempting to achieve successful fertilisation, they are looking at the environment and the amount of bamboo a pregnant panda eats. They are also collaborating with other zoos which have successfully bred pandas in captivity.

Forbes Howie was introduced by Graham Leith. Richard Brown, in proposing the vote of thanks, thanked Forbes for a fascinating presentation.

In other business, President Irene announced that Immediate Past President Jim McCulloch has been accepted as Assistant Governor, taking over the City of Edinburgh Area from Graham Leith who is moving back to his native Aberdeenshire. She congratulated Jim and thanked Graham for his wonderful commitment to Rotary both as a very active member of this club, and also in District 1020.