Are The Pandas Safe?

Panda safety has been one of the topics of great interest for a long time, the population increase may have been successful, but will it last?

Furry and playful, pandas are a vulnerable species, threatened by continued habitat loss and fragmentation and by little birth rate, both in the wild and in captivity.

Wild pandas live only in remote mountainous regions in central China; in this place, pandas are often called "bear-cats." These tall bamboo forests are cool and humid; the panda likes it because it has an insatiable appetite for bamboo; studies say that it can eat 28 pounds of bamboo; to meet the daily dietary needs of a giant panda.

Conservation efforts, now enhanced, have increased the wild panda population. Pandas that are kept free in the wild; usually occur in rural areas in natural reserves of the state near cities, while the zoos are the home of those pandas kept in captivity, usually found in cities.

Hundreds of more pandas live in breeding centers and zoos, where they are among the most popular attractions; according to the Smithsonian National Zoo, about 300 live in zoos, while fewer than 1,900 live in the wild.

Image 1: A baby panda rests on a tree.

What's the treat?

On the other hand, China faces big problems on contamination, mainly air pollution, which is well known. Poor air quality covers many places of its territory; the following Chinese cities are in the top 50 of the world's most polluted cities, Shenyang, Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.

The bad air quality contributes to the damage of the vital habitat of the species such as the Panda. Ensuring the long‐term survival of both captive and wild pandas depends, in part, on reducing atmospheric emissions of toxic pollutants throughout China.

Scientific studies have recently determined that pandas present high concentrations of persistent organic pollutants (polychlorinated dioxins, dibenzofurans, and biphenyls) and heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, and lead). This contaminant intake is due to environmental and dietary exposures.

These air pollutants can imply other nocive effects; the emissions released into the air can be deposited on the bamboo leaves, the principal food source of the Panda, and thus enter its food chain. Then they can transfer something to their offspring; this is the cycle of pollutants.

Image 2; shows "A" where pandas live, and B the latest pollution report from 2021.  Air pollution will affect Pandas found in zoos in polluted cities. The wild pandas and their reserves near Beijing, this city is a much-polluted area as seen in the images; therefore, the pandas and the bamboo will be accumulating polluting chemicals.

Image 2: Top: air pollution report (red) in China. Below: location and reduction of the habitat of pandas.

Bamboo stands out for being a plant with a great facility to purify the air, absorbing the toxic chemical compounds found in the air. These chemical compounds remain in the plant for a while; if the pandas eat these plants, they will have ingested these toxins.

However, giant pandas have been allocated reserves at higher elevations than the land for productive agricultural purposes.

Value of land tends to increase, as do pollute conditions and climate change; this does not benefit pandas. Activities such as agriculture and livestock grazing can further invade their habitat. Therefore, agricultural activities, logging, and infrastructure development near panda habitats are a complex threat.

“The average size of the habitat patches decreased by 23%, from years 1976 to 2001. It has increased only slightly since“, said Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University.

“Climate change and human activity in the province, including hydropower projects and road construction, have affected several panda habitats and will ultimately impact the local population, Ni said. According to the IUCN, climate change could wipe out one-third of the bamboo habitat of giant pandas in the next 80 years.” Said Ni Jiubin, the head of a Sichuan conservation project at The Nature Conservancy in China, told Sixth Tone,

“Despite the overall increase in the wild giant panda population, small and isolated communities face obstacles with interaction, which impacts reproductive health and genetic diversity within the population,” – Said Niu Jiubin.

What to do?

Priorities for climate-informed giant panda conservation should include maintaining and increasing suitable, connected habitat; and restoration of habitat with bamboo species and genotypes that better adapted to a warmer climate. 

Helping nearby people adapt to the changing climate is also essential to keep them out of panda habitat and minimize habitat loss and fragmentation caused by agriculture and other land uses.

With the Coronavirus pandemic, air reached low levels of pollution, this extent for a time. After the zoos were closed to the public, in privacy and tranquility, pandas in a Hong Kong zoo managed to mate for the first time in 10 years, also in other parts of the world.

Image 3: Bamboo plants, tranquility, and privacy are crucial factors for pandas' daily environment.

As there is a direct source of pollutants and a proven interaction between contaminants and pandas, these toxins can reach high levels on animals, must relocate these pandas to less contaminated areas or places that have human control.

Conservation efforts are great; decades of conservation efforts to create protected habitats for the giant panda have pushed it to the brink of extinction. Consider that we are the cause of the loss of the panda's natural habitat directly due to urban development and indirectly due to climate change.

This Conservation effort has been a win for some animals but a loss for others. According to a new study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, leopards, snow leopards, wolves, and Asian wild dogs have nearly disappeared from a great majority of the protected areas.

All four species have been absent from a large proportion of reserves since 1960, the date when they created the first panda reserves. Modern figures are surprising:  Leopards have disappeared from 81% of the areas, snow leopards from 38%, wolves from 77%, and dholes from 95%. 

Achieving the reduction of environmental pollution is essential to ensure adequate care for pandas and other animal species in this Asian area; with ideal environmental conditions, they would implement a substantial reduction in care costs.

Nevertheless, it is remarkable to point out that humans must improve the conservation methods to keep the natural balance of the ecosystem and not force the disappearance of other species of animals in the area.

References

• Sixth Tone. Li You. Regional Alliance Aims to Protect Isolated Panda Population. Mar 25, 2021. Link https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007045/regional-alliance-aims-to-protect-isolated-panda-population#.

• ESA. Yi-ping Chen Lorraine Maltby Qiang Liu Yi Song Ying-juan Zheng Aaron M Ellison Qing-yi Ma Xiao-min Wu. Captive pandas are at risk from environmental toxins. 01 September 2016 Front Ecol Environ 2016; 14( 7): 363– 367, doi:10.1002/fee.1310.

• Some Animals Have ‘Lost Out’ Because of Giant Panda Conservation Efforts – Earth Org. Carol Konyn. Asia. Aug 11TH 2020. Link https://earth.org/author/carol-konyn/.

• Erdelen, W.R. and Richardson, J.G. (2021), A World after COVID-19: Business as Usual, or Building Bolder and Better?. Glob. Policy, 12: 157-166. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12904.

• Heng-Xiao Liu, Buddhi Dayananda, Ross A. Jeffree, Cheng Tian, Yu-Yang Zhang, Bing Yu, Yong Zheng, Yang Jing, Pei-Yan Si, Jun-Qing Li, Giant panda distribution and habitat preference: The influence of sympatric large mammals, Global Ecology and Conservation, Volume 24, 2020, e01221, ISSN 2351-9894, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01221.

• Dongwei Kang. A review of the impacts of four identified major human disturbances on the habitat and habitat use of wild giant pandas from 2015 to 2020, Science of The Total Environment, Volume 763, 2021, 142975, ISSN 0048-9697, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142975.

• China Highlights. Nora Ou. Giant Pandas' Habitat, Where do Giant Pandas Live in China, Panda Habitat Protection. Updated Mar. 18, 2021. Link https://www.chinahighlights.com/giant-panda/habitat.htm.

• Quartz. Katherine Ellen Foley. Pandas aren’t worth saving—but their habitat is. June 28, 2018.  Link https://qz.com/1315209/pandas-arent-worth-saving-but-their-habitat-is/.

• Live Science. Alina Bradford. Giant Pandas: Facts About the Charismatic Black and White Bears. March 15, 2019. Link https://www.livescience.com/27335-giant-pandas.html.

• Loucks, Colby & Lu, Zhi & Dinerstein, Eric & Wang, Dajun & Dali, Fu & Wang, Hao. (2003). The Giant Pandas of the Qinling Mountains, China: a Case Study in Designing Conservation Landscapes for Elevational Migrants. Conservation Biology. 17. 558 - 565. 10.1046/j.1523-1739.2003.01494.x.