Over the weekend China announced some exciting news for Wang Wang and Fu Ni’s wild black and white cousins. The results of China’s Fourth National Giant Panda Survey recorded a 16.8% rise in wild panda numbers over the past decade with an estimated minimum population of 1,864 wild pandas. The survey also noted a positive 11.8% increase in the geographical range of the pandas since 2003.
China’s Sichuan Province, where Giant Pandas are found in the wild, is one of Zoos SA’s focuses for international conservation support. Wang Wang and Fu Ni are wonderful ambassadors in Australia helping to tell the story of China’s conservation efforts as the preservation of the Giant Panda and its habitat has a positive flow-on effect for countless other species inhabiting the mountains of China.
Our ongoing conservation support aids several key projects in China aimed at conserving the Giant Panda and its habitat:
- Supporting the Sichuan Forestry Department to improve peoples’ recognition of the nature reserves and their value, as well as increasing their understanding of how to care for these areas.
- The construction of a new office for reserve management staff in the Heizhugon Nature Reserve that will provide two protection stations located on key access roads into the reserve in addition to monitoring tools and vehicle patrols.
- Australian funding has also helped support a project at the Beijing Normal University which is researching the stress levels of wild pandas to determine whether human activities have an effect on wild pandas.
Adelaide Zoo is proud to be the only institute in the Southern Hemisphere to house this charismatic and endangered species. Since the arrival of the pandas in late 2009, zoo staff and our Chinese colleagues have developed new knowledge about pandas’ nutritional requirements and reproductive biology. This has led to new scientific data into the differences between hemispheres and how it affects the pandas’ nutritional requirements and reproductive biology. This data will help guide international efforts in creating and conserving suitable habitats for Giant Pandas in a hope to future increase the wild population.