The world’s most beloved conservation icon, China’s own Giant Panda, has been taken off the endangered list.
The status of the iconic animal has been upgraded from ‘endangered’ to ‘vulnerable’ on the Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The secret behind the revival? Lots of bamboo. A Panda’s diet is 99 percent bamboo of which they must eat between 12kg and 38kg a day. The shrinking of bamboo forests in the 1960s and 1970s saw the population of wild pandas drop below a thousand.
The dwindling forests meant that pandas were often cut off from of other pandas (as well as their food soure), which caused potential breeding pairs to be separated from each other.
The critical drop in the Panda population was one of the reasons the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) adopted the cuddly icon as it’s mascot in the 1960s to bring international awareness to the Pandas plight.
Since then numbers have steadily risen until today where the number of adults stands at 1,864 in the wild. During this time the WWF and the Chinese government adopted a number of successful strategies, including the creation of wildlife corridors and the restoration of their natural habitat.
Lo Sze Peng, CEO of WWF-China, was quick to praise the achievements of the conversation efforts “This reclassification recognises decades of successful conservation efforts led by the Chinese government and demonstrates that investment in the conservation of iconic species like giant pandas does pay off – and benefits our society as well as species.”
However, he also warned that “pandas remain scattered and vulnerable, and much of their habitat is threatened by poorly-planned infrastructure projects.”
Despite the downgrade, panda numbers still remain relatively low and there is always the potential for the trending numbers to reverse. The changing climate and rising temperatures could mean that the current habitat could become too hot for bamboo to grow thus potentially destroying the main source of food for the panda.
Whatever the future challenges may be, for now, things certainly are looking up for the black and white bears. And if the success of recent conservation projects are anything to go by we can expect our pandas to stick around for a long time yet.
[Image via World Wildlife Federation]
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