PANDA-MONIUM.

Pandas Fight to Survive

The cage was empty, with only a photograph of the former resident sitting where he used to play. Crowds of mourners bearing flowers and condolence letters came to bid a tearful goodbye. They mourned a giant furball who entranced them by playfully munching on food and romping around his cage. Hsing Hsing--the last inhabitant at the giant panda house at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.--died in November 1999.

Hsing Hsing and his mate Ling Ling, who died seven years ago, arrived in the U.S. in 1972 as tributes of friend ship from China. "Unlike most other zoo animals, they were famous not only nationally but internationally," says Lisa Stevens, the zoo's associate curator of mammals. "When they died, it was very hard for everyone."

The pandas' empty cage isn't just a painful reminder that the couple is gone. The furry black-and-white creature--along with 309 other mammals (warm-blooded animals that nurse their young with milk)--faces extinction.

The last official survey by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1988 counted fewer than 1,000 pandas in existence. Native only to China, the giant pandas' natural habitat (home in the wild) and main food supply (bamboo plants) have shrunk drastically in the past few decades. The cause: human activities like logging, urban sprawl, and illegal hunting known as poaching.

Now scientists and the Chinese government, along with the WWF, are conducting the most intensive panda study ever done--which they hope to complete by 2002. They plan to count exactly how many pandas still roam the wild, map areas of suitable habitats, and develop strategies to keep pandas alive in the new millennium.

Most of the world had never heard of the giant panda until 1869, when a French missionary stumbled on one while hiking in a remote Chinese forest. For years after, one question nagged taxonomists (scientists who classify plants and animals): Is the giant panda a bear? The word for panda in Chinese, da xiongmau (dah SHUNG-mao) means big bear cat, which stirred further debate. Finally, scientists concluded the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is indeed a bear, but is different enough in its anatomy and behavior to belong to a subfamily of its own.

Pandas live where bamboo naturally thrives, usually at elevations between 2,600 and 3,000 meters (8,530 and 9,843 feet). Today nearly all pandas dwell in the bamboo forests high in the mountains of China's central provinces (see map, p. 9). Although the bears possess the digestive system of a carnivore (meat-eating animal), they're mostly vegetarian. Occasionally they supplement their 99-percent bamboo diet with fish, rodents, and small mammals. Since bamboo proves a nutritionally poor food source, pandas must devour large quantities (about 40 pounds for 14 hours daily) to receive enough nutrients. When not eating, a panda conserves energy through sleep. Given their enormous appetite, the loss of bamboo forests ranks as the biggest threat to panda survival.

PANDA POOP

Animals who eat a lot excrete a lot. That's one way scientists hope to tally pandas in the wild--through their body waste. Pandas are so solitary, humans rarely spot them; panda waste may be the best indicator of their existence. "Since bamboo lacks nutrients, a panda's body doesn't absorb much of it," says Colby Loucks, a conservation analyst at the WWF. Pandas excrete bamboo in big chomped-on pieces, Loucks explains. Since each panda's bite size (jaw width) is unique, researchers pick out bamboo pieces from panda feces and measure it in millimeters. Each bamboo length identifies a different panda!

In addition, pandas don't reproduce often or easily, which impacts their survival rate. Female pandas have a very short estrus cycle (time when they can get pregnant); their best chance for mating occurs during three days each spring. As panda habitats diminish and splinter, the bears end up more isolated from each other, which makes breeding even harder. Also, panda cubs are extremely tiny at birth (about 100 grams) and vulnerable to illness. So infant mortality, or death, is high.

There are five pandas in U.S. zoos today. Captive (not wild) pandas prove worse breeders than their wild counterparts, and of 197 captive births in the world between 1963 and 1997, only a third lived to adulthood.

Six month-old Hua Mei (see photo, below) is a product of artificial insemination (process where sperm is injected into the mother's uterus), explains Don Linburg, giant panda team leader at the San Diego Zoo. His team of scientists is studying panda mating behavior and physiology to keep the bears reproducing successfully. The team is also studying the bears' nutritional needs and methods of fighting illness to discover better ways to save pandas in the wild.

STATE OF THE PANDA

Today in China there are 33 panda reserves (areas designated to protect and study pandas). Conservationists hope to build additional reserves in unprotected panda habitats (see map, p. 10). Since logging and urban development isolate one panda habitat from another, experts hope to create more bamboo corridors to link them. This would let separate panda populations interbreed and expand food resources.

Although data, laws, and science experiments can help in panda conservation, the most important part is public education and communication. China is a country with a booming population, and humans need expanding living space too, Lisa Stevens explains. "We must understand the needs of the local human population that live in or around panda habitats," Stevens says. "By meeting their needs, we can better conserve the forest." Hopefully, with scientists' new knowledge and diligent efforts, the endangered species won't disappear like Hsing Hsing, with only a photograph and a memory left behind.

VITAL STATS

Life span: 18 years in the wild, 30 in captivity

Height: Adults average 1.5 to 1.8 m (5 to 6 ft) in length.

Weight: Adults average 80 to 125 kg (175 to 275 lbs). A newborn weighs about 1/900th of its mother.

Communication: Pandas are solitary creatures. They have poor eyesight and communicate mostly by leaving scent marks.

Babies: Most female pandas give birth to twins. Since they can only nurse one, the weaker one is abandoned and dies.

Territory: Bamboo cutting and urban sprawl slashed the panda's mountain habitats in China by 50 percent from 1973-1984. Pandas climb higher to find bamboo, their main food source. But bamboo rarely grows above 3,500 m (11,483 ft), and its growing cycle leaves forests seasonally barren. The map below shows the six isolated areas (in green) still suitable for pandas.