No, not the old TV show. Turns out the Los Angeles zoo built an enclosure for some golden snub-nosed monkeys from China, only to have the deal go sour. Now the zoo is left with a 7.4 million dollar boondoggle.
I'm tempted to say that the reason is that American officials blanched when Beijing tried to designate their country, "Chinese L.A." But the real reason is more prosaic than that:
"[The Chinese] were resentful that federal policy on importing any endangered species
required that any money exchanged for that animal had to be used to conserve the
habitat and wild population of that species," said David Towne, a Seattle-based
consultant who helped broker the original deal. [emphasis added]
The Chinese certainly have point here. The zoo was supposed to pay $100,000 a year for the simians, and none of it was supposed to grease the palms of Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks?
Hey, those guys gotta eat too, y'know !
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