Panda: Back from the Brink. Zhou Mengqi
Mengqi Zhou
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 1887354891
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The giant panda is unique - and not just uniquely charming: it has no close relatives in the animal world. The iconic, instantly recognisable creature has symbolised wildlife conservation since it was adopted as a mascot. Yet despite having avoided extinction, a fate to which the species came perilously close, the population today is estimated at no more than 2000. This spectacular volume brings together the expertise of leading conservationists with an extraordinary collection of photographs from both the world-renowned Wolong research centre and the wilderness of Sichuan's magnificent Qionglai mountain range, the panda's natural habitat. Discover the world of this most lovable bear in this beautiful and authoritative celebration.
shoots that have been barely modified by an inefficient digestive process.) A great deal of water is inevitably lost along with so much excreted cellulose – indeed, the defecation process itself requires a lot of lubricating. Bamboo is in any case high in water content – especially the tender young shoots favoured by the panda, which contain up to 90 per cent – but there’s nevertheless a constant danger of dehydration, hence the panda’s need to drink – and drink, and drink, and drink some more,
SEASONS The bamboo season never ends because there are so many different bamboo species. The panda is believed to be able to eat over twenty different kinds, and this adaptability is essential because every single plant in the same bamboo species sprouts, grows, flowers and then finally dies back at the same time. So if the panda depended on just one species for its existence, it would never be able to survive these cyclical famines (and it’s living on a nutritional knife edge at the best of
underestimated the Wanglang panda population so badly, wasn’t it likely that the same had been done elsewhere? Wanglang is comparatively small, and it hasn’t (yet) been practicable to conduct similar surveys in other panda reserves. But if, as seems possible, estimates for those reserves have been out by the same sort of margin, the panda population must be much larger than we guessed. And conservationists are cautiously upbeat, believing that there may well be up to 3,000 pandas living in the
and research centre was established there in 1980. The centre was seriously damaged by earthquake in 2008, and pandas moved to Chengdu and Bifengxia. Plans for a new China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP) is in development within the Wolong Nature Reserve, but some miles away from the original site. Wanglang Nature Reserve Although not included in the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, Wanglang is home to more than 30 giant pandas. The reserve was established in
people, their traditions and their culture. Despite his tireless missionary endeavours, Père Armand David was less successful in spreading his Christian message than in raising awareness of Chinese wildlife in Europe. THE PANDA AND THE PRIEST ‘TRULY FOR THEM I CAN SAY I AM ANOTHER PTOLEMY, SINCE THEY KNOW NOTHING’, bragged Matteo Ricci, a seventeenth-century Italian Jesuit missionary to China, in a letter home. This was not the most tactful of remarks, or an accurate one, since it