An alarming article from LiveScience.com titled "Unusual Panda Migration" highlights the problem faced by the giant pandas. Their staple food, the arrow bamboo is going through a once-in-60-year cycle of flowering and dying before regenerating. Pandas will not eat bamboos that are flowering.And it gets worse - it will take 10 to 20 years for the bamboo to grow back and that 80% of the world's remaining pandas are located in the very area where the bamboo is regenerating.
No solution was highlighted in the article, but China and the World Wildlife Fund are trying.
Note: Photo from the same article.
Update 14 November 2007: There is a video on National Geographic News here.
I LOVE PANDAS SO MUCH THEY ARE CUTE AND I WISH I HAD ONE BUT I DONT. AND I HATE PEOPLE WHO HUNT POOR CUTE PANDAS.IF YOU AGREE PLEASE SAY YES!!!
ReplyDeleteYES! However, nowadays panda poaching is well under controlled. Of more concern now is the breeding and releasing them to the wild.
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