The story of the recovery of the Giant Panda

Introduction

Giant pandas are the only mammals of the genus Carnivora, the beer family, the giant panda subfamily and the ailuropoda. The giant panda has a head length of 1.2-1.8 meters and a tail length of 10-12 cm. It weighs 80-120 kilograms and weighs up to 180 kilograms. The body color is black and white. It has round cheeks, big dark circles, chubby body, iconic inner character walking, and scalpel sharp claws. It is one of the loveliest animals in the world.

The giant panda has lived on the earth for at least 8 million years. It is known as the “living fossil” and “China National Treasure”. It is the image ambassador of the World-Wide Fund for Nature and the flagship species of biodiversity conservation in the world. According to the third national survey of wild pandas in the country, there are less than 1,600 wild pandas in the world, belonging to China’s national first-class protected animals. The giant panda originally ate meat. After evolution, 99% of the food was bamboo, but the teeth and digestive tract remained the same, still classified as carnivores, and the risk of anger was comparable to other bear species. The wild panda has a life span of 18-20 years old and can be over 30 years old in captivity. As of November 2018, the population of captive giant pandas reached a new high, with 548 in the world. Giant pandas are endemic to China, and the main existing habitats are in the mountains of Sichuan, Shanxi, and Gansu, China.

The history of giant pandas is long. The fossils of the oldest panda, the earliest pandas discovered so far, were unearthed in Lufeng and Yuanmou, Yunnan, China with a geological age of about 8 million years ago in the late Miocene. In the long-term harsh competition for survival and natural selection, many animals of their contemporaries have become extinct, but the giant panda is a strong superior, and has become a “living fossil” preserved today. Fossils show that the giant panda ancestors appeared in the early 2000s of the Hongji period. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, it was the peak period of giant pandas. It belongs to the saber-toothed paleontology group. The habitat of giant pandas covered most of eastern and southern China, north to Beijing, south to southern Myanmar and northern Vietnam. Fossils are usually found in temperate or subtropical forests at attitudes of 500-700 meters. Later, the animals of the same period were extinct, but the giant pandas have survived to this day and maintain their original features.

The flagship species refer to species that attract public attention. The selection of the flagship species is not entirely based on the importance of ecology, but rather on its public appeal and appeal. The panda is the most typical flagship species. If the giant panda is extinct, it can actually give a huge awakening to all the caregivers of the world. Using flagship species to protect other species and local ecosystems may not be as easy and optimistic as we think.

Categories of actors

Society: Giant panda is known as a special flagship species in China due to its adorable appearance and behaviors. Giant panda has been loved by a great number of people all over the world since China started sending pandas to different regions in the world (cite1). In other words, panda also has a significant cultural and political meaning, which means there is an unavoidable linkage between China and giant panda. Every time when people visit pandas in zoo, they realize pandas come from China and this is called cultural impression. The decreasing number of giant panda will bring an image crisis to China since panda is the representative of China in cultural and political aspects. Thus, extinction of giant panda is a huge strike towards Chinese society.

Nature: Giant panda always found in remote regions of central China, which are mountainous areas. The central and mountainous part of China is a habitat for many wild animals and plants due to its climate and terrain. Giant panda as a part of biosphere, its existence close with other species which also live on the same habitat tightly. This simply because people stopped extracting panda’s habitat since the early 1960s for protecting giant pandas. As a result of it, farm land decreased and more forests and mountains were protected. Not only giant panda, but also other animals got their habitat back. In addition, the extinction of giant panda will lead to the loss of gene pool for nature. Every species has different and unique genotype, which means extinction will reduce nature gene pool’s size. Thus, recovery of giant pandas has a huge positive impact towards nature.

Human: There isn’t a close link between giant panda and humans. Giant panda can bring psychological comfort to mankind, whereas no physical relevance between them. In other words, the extinction of giant panda will make people feel disappointed and sad, but no physical harm.

Evidence of the problem

Bamboo blossom

Bamboo blossom is a natural phenomenon that happens every 10 to 100 years. This rare occurrence essentially causes the death of bamboos, often on a large scale. The drastic change is not easy to overcome since bamboo is a staple diet for the Giant Panda. It takes about 20 years of regrowth in order for the bamboo to able to sustain the nutritional need of the entire Giant Panda population. Consequently, the bamboo subtle regeneration process forces the panda to search for non-blossoming bamboo as an alternative food source within the years following the environmental crisis. Bamboo blossom had transpired between the 1970s and 1980s throughout the geographic ranges of Giant Panda located in Minshan and Qionglai Mountains which subsequently led to 279 panda deaths. Throughout the past thousands of years, the unceasing effort of the Giant Panda may have given them the capability to undergo bamboo blossoming. However, habitat degradation and other anthropogenic threats have been becoming more detrimental to the panda’s ability to cope with this phenomenon.

Poaching and Habitat destruction/degradation

The Giant Panda’s habitat has been disrupted by human activities for many years, causing anthropogenic change for the species. It is abundantly clear that before the introduction of conservational strategies, the increase in human population also increased the human-panda conflict. Poaching was a serious threat to the species conservation. Most instances of poaching illustrate that the incentive for such a cruel act is simply the greed for financial gain. Panda’s pelt has a substantial economic value; it can be valued as clothing and purchased in the black market for sixty-five thousand dollars. In 1974, 145 pandas were recorded to be killed at Wolong, but the number dropped to 72 in 1986. Unfortunately, poaching of the Giant Pandas can be accidental. In some occasions, the snare installed by poachers to catch musk deer can kill pandas if they wander into its trap. The musk deer’s scent gland is an upscale material used to produce luxurious perfumes and medications. In addition, the mountainous regions are overflowing with herbs and bamboo, which are very appealing for people who earn a little over thirty dollars every month. This in term motivated unrestricted harvesting of herbs for conventional Chinese medication and gathering of bamboo for manufactured goods. Another anthropogenic threat includes deforestation. Human population growth and urban advancement encourage removal of forests. Correspondingly, the diminishing forests greatly reduce suitable panda habitats. Habitat loss is the worse threat that the species has been experiencing. Construction of railways, roads, and dam result in the increase of panda separation and created little panda communities and complicated succession in breeding. Furthermore, fragmented land gave rise to a migration struggle for the species, and decrease genetic variation. The geographic range of pandas decreased from 19300 square miles to 3860 square miles. The estimated 1800 surviving Giant Pandas are distributed throughout the six mount ranges in Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Gansu Provinces located in China. The enormous human intervention puts grave stress on the panda’s survival rate and compressed the species into protected areas.