Heat is on to save giant pandas’ food from climate-change threat
THEIR numbers already threatened by a slow breeding rate and rapid habitat loss, China’s endangered giant pandas now also risk losing their staple food, bamboo, to climate change, a report says.
A study in China’s northwestern Qinling Mountains, home to around 270 pandas – about a fifth of the world’s wild population – predicted a substantial bamboo decline this century as the globe warms.
‘‘The pandas may face a shortage of food unless they can find alternative food resources,’’ a team of researchers from the United States and China warned in the journal, Nature Climate Change.
The international symbol of environmental conservation efforts, the giant panda, is a picky eater.
Ninety-nine per cent of
its diet consists of bamboo – a single panda devours up to 38 kilograms per day. This means the iconic black-and-white bear’s survival is closely linked to a thriving bamboo habitat.
Bamboo itself also has a slow reproductive rate, flowering only every 30 to 35 years, which means it would be slow to adapt to a change in local climate, said a statement on the research.
Based on the data gathered for this study, researchers predicted that three bamboo species which make up almost the entire diet of the Qinling pandas will all but disappear in a warmer climate.
‘‘Results suggest that almost the entire panda habitat in the region may disappear by the end of the 21st century,’’ said the study report.
The calculations are based on different warming scenarios projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – ranging from rises of 2 to 5 degrees Celsius in summer by century’s end, and 3-8C in winter.
These projections were collated with data on rainfall and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as historical growth patterns, to consider the future of bamboo.
Already deforestation is threatening the survival of about half of all bamboo species worldwide.
The researchers say bamboo distribution has historically fluctuated in response to changes in the climate. In the modern era, though, even if other areas were to become climatically more suited to bamboo growth, these would be far away and fall outside the present network of protected panda reserves.
The statement said the findings should be used to protect pandas.