The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) has been the poster animal for conservation efforts for a long time, and is even used as the logo for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) that is doing great work to protect ecosystem and species all over the world.
The panda is actually a pretty good success story for conservation effort as well. They used to be classified as endangered by the IUCN, but got downgraded to Vulnerable during the 2016 IUCN Red List revision due to the fact that the increased conservation efforts had stopped their population decline.
A giant panda enjoying some bamboo! Image by Manyman, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
How the giant pandas stopped going extinct
Giant pandas are really cool animals, but they are also very weird in some ways. One of their biggest problems for keeping a healthy population number is their extremely restrictive breeding. Getting a giant panda pregnant is almost next to impossible, especially when animals in the wild are separated by long distances.
A female will only become fertile at the age of between 4 and 8, which is very old compared to most other species. That’s one thing, but their ovulation is crazy as well, and they only ovulate once per year after they have reached sexual maturity! Their ovulation also only lasts between 2 and 4 days, so the male has a very limited time to reach an ovulating female if he wishes to breed with her.
If the female manages to get pregnant, she will care for the cub for over three years (again, this is very long compared to most other animals), and she will not get pregnant again during this time period.
A female with her cub. Image by Manfred Werner / Tsui, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
This is obviously a huge problem for the pandas, and because of this it takes a very long time to make the population increase. Luckily wildlife scientists managed to get them to breed in captivity after a long process of experimenting with this, which is pretty much the only reason why they are not about to go extinct now. Despite this, they are still limited to very few offspring, so it takes a long time to get them to a good place.
Conservationists who make sure the baby panda is healthy. Image by Colegota, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Spain license.
The pandas are currently seeing a population increase, but it is taking very long to reach the number of individuals that the conservationists and the Chinese governments aim for, which is why they recently proposed a huge national park to protect the fragmented populations!
The Giant Panda National Park
The name for the new national park will be the Giant Panda National Park, and it will be located in south-west Sichuan province. This is an area that already houses most of the wild pandas, so they will not need to release new pandas into the national park. f
The project is financed by The Bank of China who has pledged 10 billion yuan (roughly 1.5 billion USD) to create the park. That’s a lot of money, but China is very serious about the responsibility for these animals.
A total of 27,134 square kilometers is proposed to be used in the national park, which is about three times the size of Yellowstone National Park in the United States, a park considered to be gigantic with its almost 9,000 square kilometers. Most newspapers that have written about this claims that the park will be twice the size of Yellowstone National Park, but if you do some basic math you will see that it is indeed three times the size, not two.
The hope of the national park is that the fragmented populations of giant pandas that are already living in the area will be able to breed without too much human interference, and that their population numbers will increase. Once less humans use the area for human activities, it is likely that the giant pandas will move more freely within the park, and have an easier time locating each other during the limited ovulation of the females.
Image by Johann Balleis, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The park will not be ready until 2023 due to the fact that there already lives 170,000 residents within the area. I can’t find any good source that tells us what happens to these people, but according to The Guardian the Government hope that this allows them to make money from tourism, instead of exploiting the nature
Saving the pandas, but killing everything else
If you have been reading my blog, then you know that China is not really the best country when it comes to conservation efforts, despite the fact that they are very skilled at taking care of the pandas. A lot of Chinese people believe in traditional eastern medicine, such as bones and teeth from Panthera cats, scales from the pangolins, and rhino horns. They also love to eat the fins of sharks that are brutally killed, and up until recently they have had a legal ivory trade which was responsible for the death of over 40,000 elephants each year.
For these reasons I find it a bit paradoxal that they are such good caretakers of the pandas, but I guess it’s much better to exploit animals that live in other parts of the world. But at least it’s a good thing that they care about the pandas, or else they would have been extinct a long time ago.
Read more about pandas: New evidence suggest that Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) might originate from Europe, not China!
Thanks for reading
About @valth
Hey, I'm @valth - the author of this post. I love to write about nature, biology, animals, nature conservation, ecology and other related branches of science, and I occasionally write about my life, about Steem or about random stuff as well. I'm trying my best to write at least one post every day, so make sure to give me a follow if you enjoy my content and want to see more of it.
Join the @valth community!
I love nothing more than to engage with my readers, so please join the @valth community in the comment section. You will definitely find more information about the topic, personal experiences, questions, and even opposing views down there, so don't miss out on learning more.
I always reward users who post good comments, so please take the opportunity to share your views and get a small upvote in exchange for it.
You received a 80.0% upvote since you are a member of geopolis and wrote in the category of "ecology".
To read more about us and what we do, click here.
https://steemit.com/geopolis/@geopolis/geopolis-the-community-for-global-sciences-update-4
Thanks :)
Being A SteemStem Member
Encouraging news after the report on habitat fragmentation last year. The Chinese government, thankfully, has a vested interest in preserving Pandas for diplomatic uses, which makes me much more hopeful for the long term prospects of the species (as well as the species who indirectly benefit).
As for the residents, given the the government's history (such as with the Three Gorges Dam), I wouldn't be shocked to see a number of mass population relocations in their futures, unfortunately.
I agree, it's really good that they are so vested in the survival of the pandas. I didn't realize that they had such a diplomatic use, so thanks for providing a link for that story!
I was thinking this myself, but none of the sources I read could tell me more about that. It's unfortunate that I did not get to see the original source in Chinese, because that might have answered some more questions. It sounds crazy to relocate over 150,000 people, but China seems to be willing to do stuff like this for their big projects.
That's the problem with living in an autocratic system with no property rights, no need for the government to justify taking your land. In fact, 150,000 is actually a pretty small number compared to the 1.4 million evicted for the Three Gorges Dam, the 1.5 million they evicted from Beijing alone for the 2008 olympics or tens of thousands in 2017 to clear profitable land for local developers (almost 1/2 the budget of local governments come from land sales).
The idea that the government would be willing to move another 150,000 in a rural area for a major propaganda boon seems to be the most likely option in my mind.
This is a great contradictions by Chinese government. At one side they are making some serious efforts for the conservation of Big Panda. On the other side they are indirectly involved in brutal killing of Elephants, jaguars, Pangolins and rhinos for eastern medicine. Hopefully after impsoing a ban on ivory trade govt will do a serious effort to impose ban on the trade of other animals, like Jaguars, Rhino and Pangolins.
Conservation efforts by government by making national park of 27,134 square km and investing a huge amount of 1.5 Billion USD is laudable. It will not only enhance the population of Giant Panda but will also develop awareness to Chinese people that it's not good to kill animals for their so called eastern medicine. Let's hope for the best.
Yeah, it's really two-faced! I think it all has to do with the fact that they view the giant panda as a national symbol, so it is important for their pride to take good care of it. And then they don't care at all about animals in other parts of the world..
Absolutely! And it will also protect a lot of other species who live in the 27,134 square km national park alongside the pandas.
Completely agree. but dual face policy is not good at all. Hopefully next Chinese generation have more awareness and they have soft corner for other species too. Thanks for sharing
Good point. I guess we just need to wait and see how the next generations deals with all these issues. The current generation seem to be an impossible bunch to deal with.
Hopefully The next generation will be more sensible due to the awareness. Rightly said this generation disappointed us. Let's hope for the best. :)
I am not a fan of zoos so much. But their role in understanding panda reproduction has been something to watch over the past decades. There were so many failures early on. These sorts of efforts work on some species. It's been nice to watch the California Condor come back, too. But I don't know how you bring that same approach to the North Atlantic Right Whale!
So much comes down to habitat and food supplies. Good on China for setting aside such a large area. It will be interesting to see how they manage people within the area! Good luck to the Pandas!
I see your point, @haphazard-hstead. While it might not seem nice to keep animals caged in a zoo, they do bring some needed services to nature conservation as well as science. Back when I took a course in conservation biology, we divided them into "pro-conservation zoos" which would use the money they earned to found conservation programs, and "for-profit zoos" which just did this to make money. I know which ones I prefer to visit, but I'm not sure if the general public really cares about the difference.
I agree. Generally national parks do allow for lots of visitors to visit at least certain parts of the park, but I'm not really sure what their plans for this park is.
There is still controversy for Yellowstone National Park about whether some of the native people should be allowed to use the park in traditional way. And there is more and more discussion about connecting the parks along the Rocky Mountain corridor, to have Yellowstone to Yukon park that would be huge, with so much wild, wild land. I'd love to see that in place, for sure!
We do everything we can to retailer the large panda because we are the ones that have pushed it to the area of extinction. And because we can.
So by way of saving pandas, we will also be saving so tons more. We will be helping to shield now not solely these unique forests but additionally the wealth of species that live in them, such as dwarf blue sheep and lovely multi-coloured pheasants.
That's a very good point! The area in the new park does of course also house a whole range of other species, and I'm sure there are other endangered animals that will benefit nicely from this area being protected! Thanks for pointing this out :)
The fact it's funded by the government (via the independent Bank of China) is pretty cool to see. A dictatorship funding conservation. Not many of those around.
No, that's true. This is probably the only good example of it, but I guess it has a lot more to do with the fact that the pandas are a national symbol for them, and not so much about conserving nature and animals in itself.
@valth i'm a regular reader of your blog and same like previous posts this one is also best post indeed 😊😊.giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)
also known as panda bear or simply panda.my favorite animal so me too have lil bit knowledge about it.
great step of chinese government😍😍. i think giant panda is a National animal of China
Oh, it's cool that it is your favorite animal. They are really interesting animals, and you are right that they are the national animal of China. They really care a lot about them.
Yes, I agree with the fact that a drastic change is required with the people of China. Their food habits also should change. It is so horrible to look at the meat market. That will be helpful in preserving a lot more species than Pandas. Some rare species are also being brought to the meat market and being sold.
The situation is getting worse day by day. I think it is time for China to look back to their ancient history and realign.
That's true. They are really skilled at caring for the panda, but that's about the only animal they do care about it seems.
Well, it's a splendid information.
and I appriciate china decision of making a park to save this species.
They are growing at the very slow rate, so now it's our responsibility to care them. Their hunting should be stopped.
Governments Should take strong action against the hunters.otherwise, we'll loose this beautiful creature of God.
Luckily the panda is seen as a national treasure in China, so very few people are hunting them. I could only find one recent example of them being hunted, so this is not really a problem at all.
This beautiful animal deserves to be preserved. It is also a Chinese national symbol
Yeah, that's true.
well i think thas a great news if they are doing something and i think it s a very good step
Yeah, I agree that it is really a good step :)
Excelente noticia, muy buena iniciativa.Apoyaremos esa gran labor.Saludos
Thanks
A tu orden cariño, te invito a pasar por mi blog y me des tu valiosa opinion sobre mis ultimos contenidos sera grandioso saludos.
I liked your post!! They are so cute and sweet) Signed. Subscribe and on me, support each other.)
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it :) Thanks for stopping by!