Earthquake threatens panda reserve

More than 30 pandas at a reserve in south-western China face an uncertain future after a chunk of their habitat was destroyed by last year’s powerful earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people, a report out today said.

Large parts of Sichuan province, where most of the world’s remaining wild pandas live, were devastated by the massive earthquake on May 12 which left five million homeless.

Landslides and mudflows destroyed nearly a quarter of the panda’s habitat in the south Min mountain region and the remaining bamboo-rich land was left fragmented, potentially threatening the pandas’ way of life, said Xu Weihua, the study’s author and an ecologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

“The Min mountains were the hardest-hit habitat during the earthquake and the isolation of the pandas into small groups caused by land fragmentation spells trouble for its inhabitants,” said Xu, whose article was published in the ecology journal, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

“Such isolation could lead to the risk of their extinction caused by inbreeding,” he said.

The last count of pandas in the area in 2001 found just 35 of them.

The study called for more conservation in the remaining habitat areas and the creation of corridors that would link the fragmented areas and allow the pandas to interact more.

The 2,352 square-mile south Min mountain region, where the edge of the Chengdu basin meets the edge of the Tibetan plateau, is home to four nature reserves.

Pandas already are threatened by loss of habitat, poaching and a low reproduction rate. Only about 1,600 pandas live in the wild, mostly in Sichuan province. An additional 120 are in Chinese breeding facilities and zoos.

Researchers in Sichuan last week welcomed the first panda born from frozen sperm – an innovation scientists hope will help the endangered species avoid extinction.