Global News - July 2007

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Giant pandas 'stage recovery'

Mon 30 July 2007 13:30 UK — Asia

Conservation efforts to save China's giant pandas appear to be succeeding, as the creatures have expanded their habitat in two western providences in the country.

The official Xinhua news agency reported that wildlife experts have discovered giant panda droppings in areas previously thought to be beyond the animal's known habitat.

These droppings were found in the Baishuijiang Nature Reserve - a 220,000-hectare area which boarders western Gansu and Sichuan provinces.

Huang Huali, vice director of the Baishuijiang Nature Reserve Administration, is quoted as saying: "This indicates an expansion of the giant panda's habitat - and probably of its population, too.

"Our bamboo forests have been effectively restored after the massive flowering and die-off in the 1980s."

In the last national census on giant pandas - which ran from 1999 to 2001 - there were 103 pandas in Baishuijiang, making it the largest of China's panda reserves.

Giant pandas are one of the world's most endangered species, with only 2,000 thought to live in the wild throughout the world.

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