An approach on the survivorship of giant panda in wild

Abstract

The endangered giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is endemic to the mountains of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi Provinces in China. The species had numbered over 2000 animals in early 1970s, but declined to no more than 1,000 animals fragmented into perhaps 32 subpopulations in late 1990s as the result of numerous detrimental forces such as habitat shrinking, poaching and bamboo flowering. The mass flowering and followed die-off of bamboo played key roles in the declination of panda population in the past three decades. It trigged the starvation and following high mortality of giant pandas in 1970s over Min Mountains and in 1980s across Qionglai Mountains in Sichuan Province. The situation of survivorship is made worse by the fact that the panda habitat is fragmented into many small “islands”, each containing only a few pandas. Such small, isolated panda populations are rendered even more volnerable to extinction form threats such as habitat degradation, natural disaster, disease, and the deleterious effects of inbreeding. So restoring the panda habitat and reintroduction pandas to their historical habitat might be an important issue for protecting the giant panda in wild.