Habitat loss - a real estate crisis

Pandas need land

Bamboo, their sole source of food, only grows between 500 and 3100 metres and a pair of breeding pandas needs a minimum of around 30 km2 to support them.

Much of the land has been claimed for agriculture so most of the habitat is now confined to above 1400m, but this area too is now under pressure from human activities.

A lot of the panda's mountainous bamboo habitat has been destroyed by logging. In the Sichuan Province alone it shrank by 50% between 1974 and 1989. The Chinese government banned logging in the panda's habitat in 1998.


Large areas of natural forest in the panda habitat have been cleared for:

• timber
• agriculture
  
• fuel wood for heating and cooking
• infrastructure for a growing population, and
  
• hydropower development