China has made a 15-year plan to restore the habitat and
increase the artificially-bred population of the giant pandas unique to the Qinling Mountains in
northwestern province of Shaanxi, which have been confirmed as a new
sub-species of giant pandas on the verge of extinction.
Giant pandas were first spotted in Qinling Mountains in 1964, a
century after the discovery of pandas in Sichuan. Compared with giant pandas living in
southwestern province of Sichuan, home to most China's pandas,
Qinling pandas are more rare and endangered due to their smaller
population, said Sun Chengqian, deputy director of the Shaanxi
Provincial Forestry Department.
Currently, the number of Qinling Mountain pandas is
approximately 300 as against more than 1,300 non-Qinling pandas
living elsewhere in China.
By 2020 when all the projects of the plan complete, the
population of the Qinling pandas are expected to increase to 400
and their habitat will be expanded to 500,000 hectares from more
than 340,000 hectares currently, said Sun at the meeting on Qinling
pandas protection held in Xi'an, the provincial capital of Shaanxi
on Saturday.
According to the plan, Shaanxi will enlarge the area of the
state-level natural reserves for giant pandas in the province from
current 171,900 hectares to 300,970 hectares by 2010, which will
protect more than 80 percent of the habitat of Qinling pandas.
The plan also includes evacuating local residents from panda's
home and build bamboo corridors between the habitats of different
panda groups in Qinling, which have been isolated after the
original homeland were cut off to pieces by highways, tunnels or
human residential areas, said Sun.
In addition, Shaanxi also plans to save the panda sub-species,
whose number is only 17 percent of their congeners living in
neighboring province of Sichuan, by building a giant panda research
center and an artificial breeding base.
The base, which will be built at the Shaanxi Salvage and
Breeding Research Center for Endangered Wild Animals in Zhouzhi
County, contributes more to the research and breeding of giant
pandas as well as to their training before their release into the
wild, said Sun. A research group headed by Prof. Fang Shengguo of
prestigious Zhejiang University in east China had spent nine years
since 1996 to study the difference between the pandas living in
Sichuan and the Qinling Mountains and it made a conclusion last
year that two species of pandas have been separated geographically
for 10,000 to 12,000 years. Compared with Sichuan pandas, Qinling
Mountain pandas have smaller skeletons and larger cheek teeth.
What's more, the Sichuan pandas have black spots on the chest and
white hair on the belly while Qinling Mountain pandas have dark
brown spots on the chest and brown hair on the belly, said Prof.
Fang. "From their faces, the Qinling pandas look more like cats,
while the Sichuan ones are more like bears," said the professor.
"What's more, genetically speaking, the Qinling pandas are also
different from those living in Sichuan due to different
geographical and climatic conditions at their homes. And the
Sichuan Panda more evolved after they moved to live in a larger
place and the Qinling pandas keep more genetic features as their
common ancestors," he said.
The discovery of the Qinling panda sub-species not only proves
pandas have strong capability to adapt themselves to nature, but
also enriches the bio-diversity of giant pandas, lightening a
brighter future for the existence of the much-loved creatures, said
Zhao Xuemin, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration
at the meeting.
As their peers at other places in China, however, the Qinling
pandas have long been threatened with habitat loss, degradation and
fragmentation, poaching and conflicts between conservation and
unsustainable economic development.
Fortunately, the Shaanxi provincial government has reinforced
measures to improve nature conservation, in particular the Grain to
Green Project and Natural Forest Protection Project, which bans
logging for natural forests for a decade and restore
previously-logged forests, providing an opportunity to solve the
threats to giant pandas.
The province has built 14 natural reserves for giant pandas,
including four state-level ones, and five panda corridors since
1978, which effectively protected the habitat of the Qinling
pandas.
Giant pandas, said to have been around during the time of
dinosaurs, are cited as a "national gem" of China. About 1,590
giant pandas live in the wild, mostly in the high mountains the
provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu, and 160 live in captivity
around the world.
(Xinhua News Agency June 11, 2006)