Hungry horses and cows have
damaged more than one third of panda habitat in China's Wanglang National
Nature Reserve
Date: October 3, 2017
Source: Duke University
Increased livestock grazing in
China's Wanglang National Nature Preserve has damaged one third of all giant
panda habitat in the park, a new study by Chinese and U.S. scientists finds.
The habitat degradation coincides
with a nine-fold increase in livestock numbers within the park over the past 15
years.
"Increasing numbers of
free-ranging livestock inside the reserve's forests have caused tremendous
impacts on bamboos, which constitute 99 percent of the giant pandas'
diet," said Binbin Li, assistant professor at Duke Kunshan University's
Environmental Research Centre, who led the study.
"What is worse, overgrazing
has reduced the regeneration of these bamboos," Li said. "Local
communities leave their livestock to free range in the forests and only come to
feed them salt twice a month. So the livestock feed on the bamboos year-round,
especially in winter."
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