Giant panda extinction fears ruled out

A shortage of bamboo supplies due to climate change 'unlikely'

Experts have rejected a report that climate change threatens to drive giant pandas to extinction in the wild as rising temperatures wipe out bamboo stocks for the endangered species.

They say the animals are unlikely to suffer from hunger.

Bamboo, the panda's staple food, is growing well in major panda habitats, said Ouyang Zhiyun, chief of the State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Ouyang said that rising temperatures are likely to cause bamboo to grow at higher altitudes in the Qinling Mountains, but supplies were unlikely to drop.

Qinling is home to at least three major types of bamboo — arrow, wooden and dragon-head, covering a total of 250,000 hectares and growing at 800 meters above sea level.

More than two decades of panda conservation efforts have seen the population of captive pandas rise to 341 worldwide from fewer than 100 in 1990.

Wild survival

The experts said the deaths of individual pandas selected to be returned to the wild cannot be ruled out.

On Oct 11, 2-year-old male panda Tao Tao, raised by his mother in a semi-wild area to allow for better preparation for survival in the wild, was released into the Liziping Nature Reserve in Sichuan province almost six years after a similar project ended with the death of male panda Xiang Xiang, who was more than 5 years old, in early 2007.

Sarah Bexell, director of conservation education at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, said: "Animal conservation personnel consider it normal for individuals to die after being released into the wild.

"Reintroduction of wildlife is extremely risky and should be undertaken and understood with great caution. Many individuals, of any reintroduced species, perish in the process because they have lost much of their natural behavior after years in captive environments."

"Chinese experts are still researching the unique obstacles they face in learning how to preserve remaining habitat and to safely release giant pandas."

In the wild, a mother panda will drive away her cub when it is about one and a half years old. "Tao Tao was with his mother throughout the normal duration of time cubs spend with their mothers," Bexell said.

Workers in Tao Tao's reserve captured his mother, Cao Cao, now 15, from the wild when she was young.

The fact Cao Cao was raised by her mother in the wild meant she could teach Tao Tao how to climb trees when other animals approached and to find food under a blanket of snow, critical survival skills.