Threatened habitat

Giant Panda’s.

What is the habitat/ animal under threat?

The Giant panda which literally means cat-food black and white is a mammal .They are one of the rarest
animals and are found in central western and south china. The giant panda belongs to the ursidae family
(Bear). The giant panda is simply recognized by black patches around its eyes, ears and its large, round
body. The giant panda’s diet is 99% bamboo. It also eats other food such as honey, eggs, fish, yams,
shrub leaves, oranges and bananas.

In the wild the giant panda spends its life roaming around in bamboo forests. Pandas communicate
vocalization or scratching trees. An average panda lives for 20 years. Pandas do not hibernate but move
into warmer temperatures. Scientists say pandas spent most of their lives alone and only meet during
the breeding season.

Giant pandas grow up to 1 meter long when on all four legs and they grow up to 1.5 meters long. Male
pandas weigh up to 115 kg and females grow up to 100kg.
DID YOU KNOW:!!

The pandas teeth are approximately 7 times bigger than humans teeth

Giant pandas only sit or lie down when they eat.

Pandas have bad vision but a good sense of smell

When zoos attempt to breed pandas it often fails because they do not like each other.

Giant pandas spend 16 hours eating.

Where in the world is it (include a map)?

Pandas live in central western and south china.

Orange is where the pandas used to live and red is where they live now.
The giants pandas was once spread all across southern and eastern china and near Myanmar (Burma)
and northern Vietnam. The human population increasing and because of development the Giant
pandas were forced to live in less than 20 isolated of mountain forest in Sichuan, Shaanxi and
Gansu provinces in China. As shown in the map below.

The red isolated patches are where the pandas live.

The panda's surrounds the great Sichuan Plain. To the north are the Qinling Mountains and to the
west are the Minshan, Qionglai, Liangshan, Daxiangling, and Xiaoxiangling Mountains.
There are 720 Giants pandas in the Minshan Mountains.
What is the threat in the environment?

The greatest threats to Giant pandas survival is how the area they are living in is getting smaller and
smaller. They have a low birth rate and high death rate and in the 1980’s and 1990’s there were
numerous cases of poaching but has now dropped off and it no longer a major worry. Another major
threat to the giant pandas s consumption of meat. Although humans hunt pandas for its pelt humans
also hunt them for meat.

The Giants pandas range is slowly shrinking because of logging operations and many of them are illegal
and people have hunted and sold body parts of the Giant panda so this also another issue.
What is causing the threat?

Humans are what are causing the threats against Giant pandas. Humans are destroying their habitat
because the population is growing and development. From 1973 to 1984 the Giant panda range has
shrunk by 50%.

Bamboo flowering cycle is also another issue causing threats to the Giant panda, Ranging from 10 – 100
years bamboo flowers grow on large areas then die and even though the seeds can grow within a year it
will still take 20 years before the bamboos can help the bamboo population again.

There area where they live in is much smaller than what other bear species live in.

Other major factors are:

Medicinal herb collection

Bamboo harvesting
Poaching
Mining, logging etc
How are people impacting on this environment?

The giant pandas environment is getting smaller and smaller because of human activities such as
logging, getting more land for farming into forest areas, mining and road building.

In the forest areas here pandas live, humans rely on the forest for fuel, wood and timber for building
houses. Hey also collect plant and kill the pandas for medicine or food. Long ago when there were lots of
forest and few people, these issues were not a threat to pandas but now it is a major threat to pandas

The forest habitat the Giant Pandas live in, in the mountainous areas of southwest china are cut down to
make railroads and roads. This is how their environment is getting smaller and smaller.
What can be done to save the habitat/ animal?

Things we can do to help save them are

Build more nature reserves
Patrol against illegal poaching and logging
Continue researching and monitoring of the Giant pandas

We can donate to WWF to help them help pandas. We can also donate to nature reserves.