Why near extinction?
The panda’s natural habitat has been slowly diminishing because of
humans slowly moving closer and closer. Their food supply has been slowly
depleted, also because of humans.
The giant panda lives in bamboo forests up in the mountains of
western china.
People living near them need wood. Therefore they chop down the
Giant pandas habitat, and move the borders of the panda. A long time ago, the
panda was widespread in both southern and eastern china as well as western. Due
to their shrinking habitat, pandas are now spread into 20 isolated spots in
western China. The highest density of pandas is found in the Minshan Mountains
with it's 45% of the wild population and approximately 720 pandas.
How do they count them? Well, to count them, they actually go
through their excrement. They find bite-marks in undigested bamboo, which they
use to identify pandas, just like fingerprints.
By doing this they keep track of all the individual pandas, and
know that they haven’t counted the same panda several times.
The last count-up of pandas was in 2004, and this is due to the
fact that the giant pandas habitat is secure, and growing.
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