After Sichuan quake
Giant pandas at risk
More than 60 percent of the wild giant panda population in China’s
Sichuan province was affected by the powerful quake that rocked the
region and killed thousands in May 2008, a study said Monday.
Ecologists also found that the massive 8.0-magnitude earthquake,
which triggered huge landslides across the region’s mountainous terrain
and left nearly 87,000 people dead or missing, destroyed nearly a
quarter of panda habitat close to the tremor’s epicenter.
“It is probable that habitat fragmentation has separated the giant
panda population inhabiting this region, which could be as low as 35
individuals,” said Weihua Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in
Beijing, the lead author of the study published in Frontiers in Ecology
and the Environment.
“This kind of isolation increases their risk of extinction in the
wild, due in part to a higher likelihood of inbreeding.”
Sichuan is designated as one of 25 global biodiversity conservation
hotspots. The province, which contains more than half of the Earth’s
wild giant panda population, is home to over 12,000 plan species and
1,122 vertebrate species, noted Xu.
The researchers’ analyses — which involved satellite images taken
before and after the quake in the South Minshan region close to the
earthquake’s center — revealed that over 354 kilometers (220 miles), or
23 percent, of the pandas’ habitat had become bare land.
Much of the remaining habitat areas were also found to have been
fragmented into smaller, disconnected patches, which Xu said was just as
harmful as the habitat being destroyed.
To produce its estimates, the study had used criteria that make
forests suitable for pandas, such as the presence of bamboo — the
pandas’ main food source — elevation and slope incline.
In order to encourage pandas to move between the disconnected
patches, the study recommended that specially protected corridors be
built and that some areas outside of nature reserves also be protected.
The earthquake caused twice more damage to panda habitat outside than
inside the reserves.
The researchers also proposed that panda habitat be taken into
consideration during the relocation of affected towns after the quake.
“It is vital to the survival of this species that measures are taken
to protect panda habitat outside nature reserves,” Xu said.
“Giant pandas in this region are more vulnerable than ever to human
disturbance, including post-earthquake reconstruction and tourism.
When coupled with these increasing human activities, natural
disasters create unprecedented challenges for biodiversity
conservation.”
Some 600 giant pandas are still living in the wild, according to
estimates.
Protection plans for the endangered mammals recommend establishing
several dozen reserves across Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces in
China.
Washington, Monday, AFP |