Habitat : Threats to pandas : Highlights

The Giant Panda is a bear-like animal easily identified by its distinctive black and white coat, and black eyes. Adult pandas grow to weigh between 185 and 245 pounds and have a body length of 47 to 59 inches. In the wild, pandas can live 18 to 20 years. In captivity they have been known to live 30.

Pandas eat mostly the leaves, stems and shoots of various bamboo species, but bamboo is becoming scarce because its stalks flower just once every 100 years, then die. The panda has special broad, flat molars, modified for crushing, and an enlarged wrist bone which functions as an opposable thumb -- both adaptations for eating bamboo stems.

Pandas generally live alone in narrow belts of bamboo no more than 1,100 to 1,300 yards wide.

Male and female Giant Pandas reach sexual maturity between 5.5 and 6.5 years old. Females have a gestation period of 97 to 163 days and generally give birth to a single young or sometimes twins. The reproductive rate is about one baby every two years. Young pandas are fully weaned at eight to nine months and leave their mothers around 18 months.

Habitat

There are only about 1,000 Giant Pandas left in the world today. Most live in 13 reserves in China, totaling about 3,600 square miles. They live in six mountain ranges in China's Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. The panda's habitat continues to shrink as settlers push higher up the mountain slopes and as bamboo forests decrease.

Fossil evidence suggests that the Giant Panda once inhabited much of Southeast Asia, including northern Vietnam, Myanmar, and much of eastern and southern China as far north as Beijing. Climate changes and the increasing presence of people have restricted the panda's territory. While the supply of bamboo is shrinking, the primary threat to the Giant Panda comes from people.

Threats to pandas

Adult pandas are killed for their pelts, which are used to make coats and sleeping mats believed to allow the sleeper to predict the future and keep away ghosts. China has adopted the death penalty or life in prison for anyone caught poaching pandas but illegal hunting continues, in part because a single Giant Panda pelt can sell for $100,000 in U.S. dollars on the black market.

The panda's habitat has also been reduced by logging and the clearing of forests for agricultural settlement. In the Sichuan Province, where the majority of Giant Pandas live, satellite mapping and surveys completed in 1974-75 and again in 1985-88 showed the area of habitat occupied by pandas had been cut in half.

During the late 1980s, many pandas died due to the flowering, seeding and die-back of bamboo over wide areas. While this is a natural phenomenon, its effects were exacerbated by the restrictions that increased human settlement placed on the panda. Giant Pandas are no longer able to move elsewhere when food is short and many have starved to death.

Highlights

• The average life span of the Giant Panda is 18 to 20 years in the wild.
• In China, those caught poaching or smuggling Giant Pandas or their skins are put to death or sentenced to life in prison.
• In early 1995 a Chinese peasant farmer who shot and killed a Giant Panda was sentenced to life in prison; three accomplices were jailed for shorter periods.
• The Giant Panda spends between 10 and 12 hours feeding daily. Giant Pandas do not hibernate and are generally solitary.
• Scientists estimate that there are about 1,000 pandas left living on Earth.