Houston Community News >> Giant Pandas Expanding Habitat
7/28/2007 Shanghai -
Conservation efforts appear to be helping China's endangered giant panda expand
its habitat in parts of western China, the official Xinhua news agency reported
on Saturday.
The animal's droppings were recently discovered in areas beyond its known
habitat in the bamboo forests of the 220 000 hectare Baishuijiang Nature
Reserve, on the border of Gansu and Sichuan provinces.
"This indicates an expansion of the giant panda's habitat - and probably of its
population too," Huang Huali, vice director of the Baishuijiang Nature Reserve
Administration, was quoted as saying.
The pandas have been helped by efforts to curb insect pests, which have restored
the bamboo forests since 2002, Huang said.
China's State Forestry Administration has estimated 1 590 pandas live in the
wild, mostly in the mountains of Sichuan, although a study by Chinese and
British scientists released last year calculated there could be as many as 3
000.
(Contributed by IOL)