WHY HAS THE GIANT PANDAS’ POPULATION DECREASED ?
by Linda Syrje
The Giant Panda, otherwise known as Ailuropoda melanoleuca, is a member of the bear family. But unlike bears the Giant Panda is a solitary animal and has no need to hibernate. Instead they shelter in suitable cavities in trees or rock crevices. Their features are a large head with rounded ears, a heavy body and a short tail. They can weigh up to 125kg. The Giant Panda bear has poor vision but an excellent sense of smell
Evolution has given the Giant Panda an enlarged wrist bone which works in the manner of an enlarged thumb, allowing it to manipulate its food. The fur has a striking colour pattern of white with black patches around eyes, ears, paws, chest and shoulders. Their blotched colouring provides camouflage in their habitat, but there is also speculation that the eye-catching design of the pandas is to help them to be aware of each other. They are solitary and like to maintain a certain distance between themselves.
The Giant Panda is usually found in high mountain ranges of about 3000 meters above sea level. In the winter, when it gets cold, they make their way down to lower elevations of about 800 meters, where it is warmer and more food is available.
The Giant panda has been declining for thousands of years. Currently, it is one of the world’s most endangered species, with a population of approximately one thousand. The population originally extended throughout most of southern and eastern China, northern Myanmar and northern Vietnam. Now it exists only in isolated portions of China, in six mountain ranges in the provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi, and Sichuan. The reasons for this decline are loss of the Giant pandas’ habitat, the flowering cycle of bamboo (their main food source), their number of offspring and poaching.
Destruction of the panda’s natural habitat is a major threat to the survival of the species. According to the Geographic Information System (GIS) surveys done in the 1970s and 1980s, the area occupied by pandas has been reduced by more than half, mostly due to the loss of habitat because of logging and forest clearing for agriculture, timber and fuelwood. China’s Sichuan province, where aproximatly 85% of the wild population is present, shrank by 50% between 1974 and 1985. A second survey in 1999 in that area revealed that since 1987 there has been a 30% decrease in population. But a new widespread ban on logging launched in 1998 by a new forest protection programme has practically stopped all timber harvesting in the pandas habitat.
The bamboo life cycle can create problems for pandas and vice versa. This is because pandas are almost exclusively dependent on bamboo as their main food source. The pandas help distribute the bamboo seeds over many areas through their foraging and their droppings.
The bamboo plant flowers every 10 - 100 years, depending on the species. After flowering, the bamboo dies back and within a year a new seed is regenerated, but it can take up to 20 years before it can support a panda population. When a large section of umbrella bamboo died in the Min Mountains during the 1970s, at least 138 Giant Pandas were believed to have died. As panda numbers decrease so does the bamboo, making it harder to find food for the panda.
Because modern development has fragmented much of the Giant Panda’s habitat, they no longer have the flexibility to go and find better feeding areas and compatible mates. These isolated populations face the threat of inbreeding, which can lead to severe long term problems, such as a decrease in resistance to disease, less ability to acclimatise to environmental changes and reproductive problems. Fewer breeding animals contributing to a species' gene pool means there are fewer genetic variations available to enhance the species' survival in the future. Strips of land called ‘bamboo corridors’ have been created within the isolated areas to increase the movements of pandas from one area to another in times of bamboo die-backs and to minimize inbreeding and increase genetic diversity.
Experts have concluded that the Giant Pandas’ population growth is mostly affected by changes in birth rates. This is because the Giant panda reaches sexual maturity between the ages of five to seven and only gives birth once a year. This makes it harder to breed a lot of pandas to increase the population. The pandas’ breeding season takes place from March to May and normally lasts 2 to 7 days. They have a delayed implantation period; the fertilized ovum divides and floats freely within the uterus for a few months with its development arrested. Around June-July, the embryo attaches to the uterine wall and after a gestation period of 8 weeks, one or two cubs are delivered. Usually only one cub survives because one baby alone requires a lot of care and remains with the mother for 1 to 2 years, until the next breeding season.
The newborn cubs are extremely vulnerable and subjected to risk by a number of predators. They are dependent on the mother’s skills to survive. The removal of pandas at a reproductive age affects the population. Pandas do not breed well in captivity. Infant mortality is actually higher than in the wild, although the average lifespan is higher in captivity than in the wild living up to 30 years.
In the past, poaching was a serious threat to the Giant Panda population. Although they are protected by China's Wildlife Protection Law, low levels of poaching still occur because the fur holds a valuable price on the black market in the Far East. Even low poaching can have great consequences for the Giant Pandas, as it may take a long time for recovery due to their low reproductive rate and population. They are also unintentionally injured or killed by traps or snares set for other animals, such as deer and bears. Since 1987 the Chinese government has imposed the death penalty for anyone convicted of killing or in possession of any part of a Giant panda.
To save the Giant Pandas, the Chinese government has set up a number of major and minor preserves where the giant panda and bamboo are both known to reside. Examples of such reserves are; the Wolong Nature Reserve and Chendu, both located in China’s Sichuan province.
The Wolong Natural Reserve Park is the largest panda reserve in the world, with a size of 2,035 sq km. It is in existence primarily for the protection and reproduction of the Giant Panda. Currently it is focusing on artificial breeding of Giant Pandas, and for them to later be released into the wild. The centre only takes care of pandas under the following conditions; when pandas are brought up from captive breeding, when they are somehow separated or injured in the wild and are not capable of surviving if released back, or if a panda is to be released into the wild from other reserves. The reason for this is to prevent the removal of Giant Pandas from the wild into captivity.
The pandas are usually kept individually in captive cages. When soon to be reintroduced into the wild, they are placed in semi-nature cages protected by fences, with the ability to roam around and recover their natural surviving skills until safe to be released.
Wolong is not only home to Giant Pandas but to people living within the reserve. Research has shown that only half of the reserve is panda friendly and of that a quarter is occupied by humans. The human population living within the reserve over the past years has increased by 70 percent. It is a great threat to the pandas’ habitat, as more and more people are using wood for cooking and heating because the price for electricity and coal is too high. For this reason, in 1990, the Chinese government tried to resettle some of the Wolong householders but failed because many older people could not get used to living outside of it. Experts state that if 22% of Wolong’s young people could relocate after attending college, the population would drop to a manageable 700 people by 2047, allowing the pandas’ habitat to recover.
Improvements have been set up to help prevent the Giant Panda’s extinction. In 1983 the US fish and wildlife service proposed that the Giant Panda be classified as an endangered species. It also supports the Giant Panda conservation efforts in China through funding and technical assistance, including resource management, research and educational programmes. Pandas are also protected under the Conservation of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
To ensure the survival of the Giant panda, in 1992 the Chinese government has issued a “National Conservation Management Plan for the Giant Pandas and Habitat” which contained guidelines for:
- A decrease in human activity in the pandas’ habitat to insure minimum destruction
- Removal of human settlement from Giant Pandas’ habitat
- Modification of forestry operations
- Controlling poaching
- Management of bamboo
- Extension of the Giant Pandas’ resource system
- Maintaining pandas in captive population
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has joined the Chinese government in conserving the panda’s habitat for the past twenty years. Currently the WWF is trying to put forwards other plans to help the conservation of the pandas; getting the Chinese Government to focus more on conservation priorities rather than its economic growth, the improvement of workers with higher skills equipped for panda reserves and the development of the economic needs of the human habitats around panda reserves to decrease the amount of logging and poaching that still occurs. The WWF has contributed greatly to the conservation efforts by adopting the Giant Panda as their international symbol. The efforts began in the 1980s when WWF funded large amounts of money for the conservation of the pandas. They also contributed to the cost of setting up the Wolong Reserve, which was established in 1984. They completed their programme for the conservation of the Giant Panda and its habitat in 1989. Recently they began partaking in the panda management plan which has been set up by the Chinese government to create a number of new resources such as improving patrolling in reserves, and the reduction of logging activity. In March 2002 the WWF launched “The Qinling Panda Focal Project” containing three units concerning the Qinling mountain range;
- The protection of the Giant Pandas habitat and creation of five corridors for the possibility of migration of the panda population in the Qinling area
- Cooperation between biodiversity conservation and the development of tourism in the Qinling area.
- To maintain community development over the whole Qinling Giant Panda range.
WWF hopes that by 2012, there will have been a 10% increase in the Qinling Giant pandas’ population and an increase of 80% in its protected habitat. So far the following achievements have been achieved; new conservation-based activities such as the cultivation of salmon, installing wood-saving stones, and supporting of medical centres in the villages to reduced the human activity within panda habitat. Whatever the number of Giant Pandas in the wild is, it is clear that unless more steps are taken to protect the species and its habitat they will become extinct in the next century. Their only hope for the future is that we will be able to balance the human needs and the needs of the pandas to prevent the extinction of this rare animal.
References:
BBC News World http://bbc.co.uk/
Chinas Organisation http://china.org.com/
The US Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov/
Law of Environmental Protection http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/34356.htm
Law of the Forest http://172.16.1.87/pls/wcm/english.html?infoid=38268&lminfoid=33890
Law on the Protection of Wildlife http://172.16.1.87/pls/wcm/english.html?infoid=38268&lminfoid=33890
Michigan State Uninversity (MSU) ‘Panda Research in China’ http://panda.ur.msu.edu/index.html
Smithsonian National Zoological Park http://natzoo.si.edu/
The American Zoo and Aquarium Association http://www.aza.org/
The Panda Organisation http://www.panda.org/
The Panda Trust http://www.panda-trust.org.uk/
World Wide Fund for Nature http://www.wwf.org/ UK http://www.wwf.org.uk/ CHINA http://www.wwf.china.org/
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre http://www.unep.org/