Through the building of a bamboo corridor, two
isolated groups of giant pandas living in the Qinling Mountains area in
northwest China's Shaanxi Province are expected to be reunited after two decades
of separation.
Rangers from the Mount Guanyin Nature Reserve and social volunteers have
began planting bamboo on top of a 1,900-meter-long highway tunnel that runs
through the Qinling Mountains.
Built in 1999, the tunnel led to the abandonment of a 13-km-long section of
the No. 108 national highway that separated two groups of giant pandas living in
the Mount Tianhuashan area and Mount Xinglong more than two decades ago.
Approximately 90 hectares of bamboo will be planted on the Qinling tunnel,
forming a passage for free exchanges between the two isolated panda groups, said
Yong Yange, head of the research center of the state-level Fuping Giant Panda
Protection Zone.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Shaanxi Provincial Forestry Bureau and
provincial-level Mount Guanyin Nature Reserve jointly launched the bamboo
planting program early this week.
Local farmers say they have spotted giant pandas four to five times a year
after the abandonment of this section of the highway, said Zhu Yun, an official
with the Mount Guanyin Nature Reserve.
It is estimated that there are now approximately 1,590 giant pandas living in
the wild worldwide, most in the mountainous areas of southwest China's Sichuan
Province. There are only 273 giant pandas living in the Qinling area.
"Qinling pandas are a rare group of these hairy creatures. People should be
more concerned with their living environment and take more measures to protect
them," said Ke Gao, a noted Chinese photographer of pandas.
Giant pandas were first spotted in Qinling Mountains in 1964, a century after
the discovery of pandas in Sichuan. Scientists have found that Qinling and
Sichuan pandas have evolved differently in recent decades.
WWF made a socio-economic survey and worked out the threats to giant pandas,
including disturbance from humans and traffic, in the area in 2005. The
international conservation organization cooperated with the Mount Guanyin Nature
Reserve to begin restoring the giant panda habitat in the area in Sept. of the
same year. Bamboo planting is part of the protection program.
According to the plan, four more such passages for pandas will be built in
the Qinling area in the future, which is expected to bring new hope to the
conservation of wild giant pandas in the region.
