For many years, humans have devoted a remarkable amount of conservation efforts to increasing the population of giant pandas. With that in mind, why are they endangered? What caused the decline in giant panda populations, and what is being done to preserve them for future generations?
China’s wild panda numbers on the rise
In 2016, the bamboo-eating giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), native to south-central China, was reclassified as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), after spending nearly 30 years on the “endangered species” list.
Today, there are an estimated 1,864 giant pandas in the world, plus a wild population that exceeds the geographic range in which researchers expect to find them.
While this is good news, new studies show that there is still a risk to giant pandas in the wild due to infrastructure development and livestock grazing leading to habitat loss. The Life and Biology of Pandas
To understand why wild pandas were threatened with death, we must also recognize their particular nutritional and habitat needs.
Pandas consume bamboo best and can therefore thrive best in bamboo forests and mixed forests with high concentrations of the food source. Those areas were under threat due to human activity during the 20th and 21st centuries.
In ancient times, wild populations of giant pandas were known to extend across much of southern China, as far south as Vietnam and Myanmar, but large-scale climate change at the end of the Ice Age and deforestation by humans led to significant habitat loss.
Today, pandas live in China’s Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces.
As large animals, giant pandas have very few natural predators, but they can be vulnerable to attacks by other animals such as bears, snow leopards, and wild dogs. Historically, humans have hunted pandas for their fur, but because of their reputation as an endangered species, killing or mutilating pandas (or trading their fur) can be punishable by Chinese authorities.
Because the bamboo that pandas eat has a low nutritional density, they must eat a large amount of it every day. As a result, pandas take a long time to digest their food and do not lead very active lives.
Mating behavior of pandas
Another factor in the decline in the giant panda population is that they often do not produce enough cubs to sustain themselves. Female pandas are typically only fertile for a few days of the year, meaning they can go more than a year between pregnancies.
Females can give birth to one or two cubs at a time but only can care for one. In the wild, the second cub is often left abandoned. Panda Habitat Loss and Recovery
All private and government entities must invest resources to help protect pandas by maintaining and restoring the wild panda population in China. A study published in the September 25, 2017, issue of the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution looks at what caused this population boom and whether it is likely to continue.
“What my colleagues and I wanted to know was how panda habitat has changed over the past four decades since the extent and connectivity of a species’ habitat is also an important factor in determining its risk of extinction,” said co-author Stuart Pimm, professor of conservation ecology at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, in a press release.
The researchers used satellite imagery data to determine land use change across the panda’s geographic range. They found that between 1976 and 2001, bamboo forests declined by 23 percent, but that the decline accelerated slightly between 2001 and 2013.
This encouraging trend has been driven primarily by bans on commercial logging by humans in panda breeding areas, as well as the establishment of dozens of panda reserves across China and the education of humans living within these reserves.
However, the changes in those panda-friendly areas of China have not all been appropriate: large amounts of new infrastructure, such as roads and hydroelectric plants, have been built since 2001. “Those were the key drivers in habitat fragmentation,” Pimm said. “There was almost three times the density of roads in 2013 than in 1976.
While there is no single, permanent method to ensure the conservation of these iconic animals, the study group suggests creating panda corridors between current habitat areas, which would allow the last wild pandas to locate each other and prevent any part of the population from becoming isolated.
Bamboo forests are shrinking
An independent cooperative research initiative by Chinese and American scientists looked at the effect of livestock on bamboo forests.
The second study, published online on October 3, 2017, in the journal Biotechnology Conservation, noted that in 15 years, the number of farm animals in China’s Wanglang National Nature Park has increased 900-fold, accounting for one-third of the total giant panda habitat in the park. “These problems are not unique to our study site, but they are not unusual in nature reserves and panda habitats. This is not just an ecological problem, but also a risk among communities, nature reserves, local governments, and other stakeholders,” said Li Sheng, an assistant professor of conservation biology at Peking University in China, who was involved in the second study.
“This long-term monitoring shows that pandas are being pushed out of areas that are heavily used by farm animals, especially the park’s valleys,” said Pimm, who was involved in both studies. “These lower-altitude regions are important for large pandas, particularly during winter and spring.”
Captive panda breeding efforts
In addition to dedicating swaths of land as panda reserves, the Chinese government has also devoted resources to breeding pandas in zoos. Currently, all captive pandas in the world are considered on loan from China, and any cubs born in captivity must return home to the United States. To encourage conservation efforts.
Breeding giant pandas is difficult because the animals only tend to mate every two or three years. Some practitioners have turned to artificial insemination of female pandas as a method of preserving the captive population.