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Description
Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)

The giant panda has been declining for hundreds of years due to hunting by humans. Its populations originally extended throughout most of southern and eastern China, northern Myanmar, and northern Vietnam. By 1900, it occurred only in the Qinling Mountains and along the edge of the Tibetan plateau. Soon after 1900, the expansion of agriculture upstream along principal river valleys separated this distribution into separate regions in six mountain ranges. Currently, the giant panda occurs in portions of these six mountain ranges in China's Gansu, Shaanxi and Sichuan Provinces.

The greatest threat to panda survival is the loss and degradation of its habitat. The giant panda's range is steadily shrinking as logging operations - many of them illegal - fell trees, and peasants clear land for farming or harvest vegetation for fuel. Already panda populations are small and isolated, confined to high ridges and hemmed in by cultivation. Poaching was a serious problem in the past, but it has dropped off, and it is no longer considered a major problem in substantial portions of the range. Furthermore, pandas' body parts have not been sought for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Giant pandas are killed, however, as victims of poachers' snares set for musk deer. An indirect threat from habitat fragmentation relates to the panda's reliance on bamboo for food. This threat arises because bamboo stands are subject to periodic large-scale die-offs. In the past, when bamboo died off, pandas could migrate to areas with healthy bamboo. But with fragmented habitat, this may not be possible.

The giant panda is listed as endangered in the World Conservation Union's (IUCN's) Red List of Threatened Animals. There are about 1,600 left in the wild. More than 160 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers around the world, mostly in China.

Description
Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)

The giant panda has been declining for hundreds of years due to hunting by humans. Its populations originally extended throughout most of southern and eastern China, northern Myanmar, and northern Vietnam. By 1900, it occurred only in the Qinling Mountains and along the edge of the Tibetan plateau. Soon after 1900, the expansion of agriculture upstream along principal river valleys separated this distribution into separate regions in six mountain ranges. Currently, the giant panda occurs in portions of these six mountain ranges in China's Gansu, Shaanxi and Sichuan Provinces.

The greatest threat to panda survival is the loss and degradation of its habitat. The giant panda's range is steadily shrinking as logging operations - many of them illegal - fell trees, and peasants clear land for farming or harvest vegetation for fuel. Already panda populations are small and isolated, confined to high ridges and hemmed in by cultivation. Poaching was a serious problem in the past, but it has dropped off, and it is no longer considered a major problem in substantial portions of the range. Furthermore, pandas' body parts have not been sought for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Giant pandas are killed, however, as victims of poachers' snares set for musk deer. An indirect threat from habitat fragmentation relates to the panda's reliance on bamboo for food. This threat arises because bamboo stands are subject to periodic large-scale die-offs. In the past, when bamboo died off, pandas could migrate to areas with healthy bamboo. But with fragmented habitat, this may not be possible.

The giant panda is listed as endangered in the World Conservation Union's (IUCN's) Red List of Threatened Animals. There are about 1,600 left in the wild. More than 160 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers around the world, mostly in China.