Zhou Zhou and Lin Wei - Humans' Action and Pandas

Hi guys. This post and the next will be a summary of our research done at the NLB Library on last Saturday :)

Farming activities:
To meet the increased demand of food, farmers have to expand their plantations higher up the mountain slopes, where the giant panda resides. They fell trees for fuel, building materials and also to create space for animal fodder. The cattle, sheep and goats graze any seedlings and prevent the growth of the forest. Moreover, their hooves loosen the thin mountain soil. With no trees to protect the soil, the rain has a direct impact on the land, causing soil erosion/landslides and washing away the topsoil, where most of the nutrients are. This leaves the land barren and bamboo trees are unable to grow again. The bamboo trees are already slow to recover and may take 80-90 years to reach a diameter of 20-25cm. With cutting and grazing in the picture, the recovery period will definitely be prolonged. Hence, a huge amount of bamboo, the giant panda’s main source of food, is lost.

Another example is the mushroom production at SanGuanMiao. Mushroom production involves the removal of understory bamboo and canopy trees in the pandas’ winter range. The understory vegetation plays a part in the quantity and quality of the panda habitat. From a study, total amount of estimated habitat decreased by 29–52% and decreased connectivity was significant after bamboo information was incorporated into the analyses. The decreases in the quantity and quality of panda habitat lead to a decrease of 41% in the estimated carrying capacity.


(Adapted from Biological Conservation, Volume 121, Issue 3)

There is a maximum point to the amount of shoot harvesting that can done in order not to disrupt the equilibrium between the panda and the habitat. Once we exceed that point, the bamboo populations will be reduced due to the predation by insects, rats and pandas, causing the pandas to eventually starve.


Fuelwood collection:
Fuelwood is the main source of energy for the people living in/near the Wolong Nature Reserve. Fuelwood requires the cutting down of the bamboo forests, which cuts down on the area of the habitat of the giant pandas.

In response to this problem, a research was done by interviewing the residents there to estimate a random utility model of choice of adopting electricity for cooking and heating. The 2 factors that affected the willingness to switch to electricity was demographic and electricity factors (price, voltage, and outage frequency). In addition to price, non-price factors such as voltage and outage frequency significantly had an impact on the demand. Thus, lowering electricity prices and increasing electricity quality would help to encourage local residents to switch from fuelwood to electricity. (I couldn’t find the data sorry )

From these 2 causes, I think that the government should be listening to the views of the local residents. If they’re needs and requirements for their daily lives are not met, they will continue to cut down the bamboo. Thus, it is important that the government achieve a balance between the 2.


Road Construction:
With China’s rapid economic development comes a more connected transport system. Although roadway construction brings convenience for the people, it leads to habitat loss and fragmentation as there is a limit to which a species can migrate, thus decreasing the connectivity among the populations. It also can block gene flow among isolated populations, which is essential for mating and reproduction to take place. Roadway construction changes the properties of the environment such as water, soil, atmosphere, sunlight and noise. The ecological impact of the construction of a roadway can be an area 10 times greater than the roadway itself. Thus, one can say that road construction hinders the pandas from mating with each other and thus further lower their reproduction rate.


(Adapted from Acta Ecologica Sinica, Volume 31, Issue 3)


(Adapted from Acta Ecologica Sinica, Volume 31, Issue 3)


(Adapted from Acta Ecologica Sinica, Volume 31, Issue 3)


Tourism:
Tourism, especially of the giant pandas, is a pillar of strength for Sichuan. Tourists are willing to pay an exorbitant sum of money just to get pictures taken with the pandas. One example is at the Wolong Nature Reserve, where a gaggle of students paid $362 to take a picture with 3 year old Long Fei. As quoted from Mr Harkness, of WWF China, "Pandas are extremely shy and sensitive to human disturbance”, all these disturbance will definitely have a negative impact on the behavioural and mental development of the panda.


Unfortunately, things are not getting better. After being tapped as an official ecotourism destination last year, the reserve is preparing themselves for an annual 500,000 to 700,000 visitors, up from just 10,000 in 1997, boosting revenue from from 18 million yuan to 70 million yuan (6.9 million euros). In order to accommodate the increasing number of tourists, more roads and traffic will be in place(refer to Road Construction above J)

With more tourists, the government obviously has to build more hotels in order to accommodate them. In order to get the land they need, deforestation will have to occur, and these might be the giant panda’s habitat or other species of animals.

In my opinion, the whole point of a nature reserve is to protect the panda and let it live peacefully. However, if the nature reserve is opened to tourists, the panda is unable to survive normally and it defeats the whole purpose of having a nature reserve. The least the nature reserve can do is to let the tourists view the panda’s from a distance and not allow any flash photography. After all, the construction of the nature reserve is for the benefit of the giant pandas, not the tourist.


Captive Breeding:
Captive breeding is one of the methods used to help secure the panda’s future. Researchers can study their behaviour and the pandas go through assisted reproduction methods in order to breed more pandas. However, although this method is efficient in stabilizing the panda population, the assisted reproduction methods such as artificial insemination, cause the behavioural deficiencies in the captive population. In the wild, the giant pandas use their sense of smell to find mating partners. However, artificial insemination, for example, makes use of chemicals to raise the sexual awareness of the pandas so as to collect semen (from the male) to increase the hormone levels in the females. This disrupts the natural cycle of using olfactory communication to mate. In addition, captive breeding my bring distress for the youngs due to the limited space given.

Although captive breeding has its disadvantages, however, it has its own advantages if it is successful. A successful captive breeding program can serve as an establishment of a self-sustaining captive population and it secures the future of the animals’ survival.

Captive breeding is not only the commitment but also the support of politicians and a strong finance is needed. For captive breeding to be possible, a lot of cash and funds are needed to sustain it. At times, a huge area of land is also needed, this is to ensure that the animals will not feel restricted and distress. Moreover, researchers have to be hired in order to ensure the success rate of the captive breeding is high. Politician support is needed to ensure that the organization will be able to act more freely, giving them more opportunities to carry out certain projects which are useful. The risk of bribery is also lowered.

However, even with the support of politicians, a project carried out might also be criticized by the publics. This happened once when the pandas were sent over to another country in the late 1900s. This caused the Chinese government to announce that only animals caught or bred artificially before 1983 was allowed out of China. The future applications for panda loans has to be approved by central Chinese government.

Fish and Wildlife service loaned the pandas and decided to put a side some money aside from the revenues they earned from the pandas for expanding panda breeding facilities in Wolong – which may harm the conservation efforts (New York Times, 31st May 1988). Later on, it was also proven that it was not very successful to breed pandas, as only one cub was bred in Wolong. Instead, catching animals from the wild and expanding breeding programs was more efficient.

Later on 16th September, the Chinese decided that they would no longer take any panda loans from the United States which was unfortunate. A well-controlled and managed loan system will raise money and awareness of the conservation efforts.

Some other problems are being faced, especially by researchers outside of China. Researchers and biologist out of China might have already done their research, however, they are not very efficient since they had little experience in handling pandas. Western biologists faced difficulties in differentiating the sex of the panda.

Here is an example: Pan Dee and Pan Dah at the Bronx zoo were thought to be male and females. However, it turned out to be both females with the result from an autopsy. Sometimes when the panda out of China requires help, China might politely refuse them, leaving these countries’ researchers without any help. An example, in 1960 Chi Chi showed signs of oestrous. However, enquiries on a possible mate was refused politely.

Coming to the most recent concern of captive-bred animals being released into the wild and ended up being killed, I feel that we should not be so focused in releasing the captive-bred animal into the wild, even with the knowledge of the dangers the animals will face. Instead of that, we should keep this animals as performing animals. After all, most captive-bred animals being released turned out unsuccessful.


Educational Programmes:
In China, prekindergarten and kindergarten children (2-6.5 years old) were the main target for the education of conservation programmes (giant panda). The reason behind targeting them is their higher receptivity. Altering the teenagers and adults’ views will be of greater difficulty.


Other Human’s Action and their Impacts

The Chinese government made plans to reduce the adverse impact on the reserve (since they’re built quite closely to villages) by providing incentives for Wolong’s residence to change their life style to one that has least impact on the pandas. The incentives was probably made possible as the government foresee that it was possible for ecotourism of Wolong Panda Reserve can bring them money (this sum of money can be as much as $29 million to $42 million according to a recent study).

Ecotourism(at Panda reserve) with an attraction as the pandas, as shown above, ecotourism is a boost for the country’s economy. With ecotourism, the locals would have higher job opportunities as more manpower is needed. This solves the problem stated by Zhou Zhou in her previous post stating that people lose jobs since logging was banned, causing them to turn to crimes. Also, the residents who are located nearer to the main road, away from the conservation, are the ones who are more likely to receive these benefits. Hence, this may discourage those leaving nearer to the panda conservation, moving down, further away from the panda conservation. This in turn, would have a lesser impact on the pandas.

With some form of economical benefits, I feel that it would be very effective and the locals will feel more supportive in the idea of conserving pandas.

Logging activities started in Wolong in 1916 and peaked from 1961 to 1975. With concerns of logging activities affecting the pandas, it was banned in 1975 to preserve the panda’s habitat. Although logging activities does not really affect the survival of bamboos, however, the form of its growth is affected. Pandas tend to spend lesser time at areas which logging activities had been carried out heavily. It was probably due to less palatable/nutritious bamboos or stems are difficult to manipulate and select. This would in turn narrow the area in which the panda moves about, making them more isolated. Hence, this would directly have an impact on the low population of the panda.

The increasing demand for land and resources have caused much disruptions for the panda’s habitat since more land would be need to clear for farming activities(as mentioned above), fuel wood collection(as mentioned above), housing and industry. It is natural for the demand for resources and land to be rising, for the number of mouths we need to cater to is rising. However, this demand can be reduced with have better land planning, laws enforced and taxes to discourage people to waste their resources. This would not only help the pandas greatly, but also other wildlife species and most importantly ourselves! If we do not do something about it, the pandas would continuously being affected by human’s activities. Not only are we destroying their habitats but also disturbing their lives. As we clear more forests for land, we will be getting closer to the pandas, causing them to be affected for easily by our actions even if we are carrying out our daily necessities. Lastly, the panda’s habitat would also become more fragmented.



Sources:
Giant Pandas Biology and Conservation, Donald Lindburg and Karen Baragona
The Giant Pandas of Wolong, George B. Schaller
Biological Conservation, Volume 121, Issue 3
Acta Ecologica Sinica, Volume 31, Issue 3
Wall Street Journal July 7, 2004
Ecological Economics Volume 42, Issue 3
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00267-008-9214-3
http://www1.american.edu/ted/panda-tour.htm
http://askabiologist.asu.edu/podcasts/panda-monium (an interview)