Yahoo News 27 Jul 09;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – More than 60 percent of the wild giant panda population in China's Sichuan province was affected by the powerful quake that rocked the region and killed thousands in May 2008, a study said Monday.
Ecologists also found that the massive 8.0-magnitude earthquake, which triggered huge landslides across the region's mountainous terrain and left nearly 87,000 people dead or missing, destroyed nearly a quarter of panda habitat close to the tremor's epicenter.
"It is probable that habitat fragmentation has separated the giant panda population inhabiting this region, which could be as low as 35 individuals," said Weihua Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, the lead author of the study published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
"This kind of isolation increases their risk of extinction in the wild, due in part to a higher likelihood of inbreeding."
Sichuan is designated as one of 25 global biodiversity conservation hotspots. The province, which contains more than half of the Earth's wild giant panda population, is home to over 12,000 plan species and 1,122 vertebrate species, noted Xu.
The researchers' analyses -- which involved satellite images taken before and after the quake in the South Minshan region close to the earthquake's center -- revealed that over 354 square kilometers (220 square miles), or 23 percent, of the pandas' habitat had become bare land.
Much of the remaining habitat areas were also found to have been fragmented into smaller, disconnected patches, which Xu said was just as harmful as the habitat being destroyed.
To produce its estimates, the study had used criteria that make forests suitable for pandas, such as the presence of bamboo -- the pandas' main food source -- elevation and slope incline.
In order to encourage pandas to move between the disconnected patches, the study recommended that specially protected corridors be built and that some areas outside of nature reserves also be protected.
The earthquake caused twice more damage to panda habitat outside than inside the reserves. The researchers also proposed that panda habitat be taken into consideration during the relocation of affected towns after the quake.
"It is vital to the survival of this species that measures are taken to protect panda habitat outside nature reserves," Xu said.
"Giant pandas in this region are more vulnerable than ever to human disturbance, including post-earthquake reconstruction and tourism. When coupled with these increasing human activities, natural disasters create unprecedented challenges for biodiversity conservation."
Some 600 giant pandas are still living in the wild, according to estimates.
Protection plans for the endangered mammals recommend establishing several dozen reserves across Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces in China.
New Panda Preserves Suggested
Henry Fountain, The New York Times 29 Jul 09;
The magnitude 7.9 earthquake that killed more than 70,000 people in Sichuan Province in China last year also struck the world’s remaining wild populations of giant pandas. Scientists knew the impact on the animals’ habitat was severe, but most of the attention was on the immediate damage at one protected area, the Wolong National Nature Reserve, which is home to about 150 of the country’s roughly 1,500 pandas as well as a breeding center.
Now a study using satellite imagery has put some hard numbers on the quake’s long-term impact. In one of the hardest hit areas, the southern part of the Minshan Mountains, about one-quarter of the panda habitat, or 135 square miles, was destroyed by mudflows and landslides. The flows also had the effect of fragmenting much of the remaining habitat into smaller patches.
In a paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Weihua Xu and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences detail the destruction in South Minshan, which is home to about 35 pandas and contains four reserves. They suggest that several new protected areas be created in the region, and that new corridors between fragmented areas be established “to ensure the long-term sustainability of the giant panda population and habitat.”
Dr. Xu and his colleagues used satellite images from before the quake, supplemented by fieldwork, to identify areas of suitable panda habitat — forested, not-too-steep mountain land at elevations between 3,300 and 12,500 feet, with plenty of pandas’ staple food, bamboo. Then they compared post-quake satellite images to determine where mud- and landslides had obliterated the habitat. They found that habitat in the region was reduced from about 590 square miles to 455.
Fragmentation of panda habitat has long been a problem in China, but in the past it was mostly due to deforestation and other human activities. In an email message, Dr. Xu said that while the scope of the new fragmentation was difficult to quantify, “the isolation of pandas got worse after the earthquake.”
The researchers recommended that three new protected areas, totaling about 120 square miles of habitat, be established, along with two small corridors to allow pandas to move between the old and new reserves. They also suggested that because most of the intact panda habitat is now at lower elevations, where the possibilities of human disturbance are greater, that the government consider relocating some people who live in scattered plots throughout the protected areas.
Dr. Xu said he thought there was a “high possibility” that some of the recommendations would be adopted, and noted that some of his team’s habitat analysis had already been used in planning for reconstruction of the region. But relocating people, he noted, “is a big issue which needs further analysis.”
