Giant Panda

Common name - Giant Panda

Scientific name - Ailuropoda melanoleuca

Habitat - Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests of Southwest China

Status – endangered

Population – 1600 in the wild (at 2004)

Height – up to 150 cm for adults

Weight – 100 to 150 kg

 

Problems

     Despite the conservation success in the panda’s habitat in recent years, there are still problems. The factors that mainly contribute to habitat loss and fragmentation (which are the main threats to the giant panda) are the conversion of forests to agricultural areas, medicinal herb collection and bamboo harvesting, poaching and large-scales development activities such as road construction, hydropower development and mining.

     China has a growing human population and because of that panda populations are isolated in narrow belts of bamboo. Panda habitat will continue to disappear as settlers push higher up the mountains.

Solutions

     WWF has been active in giant panda conservation since 1980, and is now working with the Chinese government on trying to find a way to save giant pandas.

     The current work is focused on the Minshan Mountains, in Sichuan and Gansu provinces, and Qinling Mountains, in Shaanxi province. The solutions they found for those areas include increasing nature reserves, creating green corridors to link isolated pandas, patrolling against poaching and illegal logging, building local capacities for nature reserve management and continued research and monitoring.     

     The giant panda is a very powerful symbol of conservation. In China they are considered a national treasure and for the WWF the panda also has a special meaning since it has been the organization’s symbol since 1961.