Looking Forward

Climate Change

 

Climate change has become a pressing problem all over the world in the past decade. Due to increase in greenhouse gas emissions, weather patterns all across the world have been changing, growing more extreme and strange.

 

This spells very bad news for pandas as climate change is expected to destroy over 30% of panda habitats. Panda habitats are a delicate balance of flora and fauna. They would be fragile towards major external changes like changing weather patterns.

As mentioned in pandas 101, pandas need to live in broadleaf and coniferous forests with a dense understory of bamboo that have torrential rains or dense mist throughout the year. With climate change, it is highly likely that the amount of water vapor in the environment would change, thus adversely impacting the biome that requires lots of water. This would cause loss of habitat for pandas as the ecosystem they inhabit become unbalanced.

 

Loss of Habitat

China is still in the midst of developing and shows no signs of stopping. As communities develop, it is inevitable that forests will be cleared to make space for new infrastructure. The provinces pandas are found in are less developed provinces and thus, the most likely to be affected in the next waves of development.

It is likely that over the next few years, more and more panda habitat becomes converted for human use, leaving little space of pandas. This encroachment onto panda territory may result in additional stress to pandas, increased human-wildlife conflict etc.

Simply put, the number of pandas will fall.

Although the Government already has measures in place to protect panda land, it may only be a matter of time where it weighs the costs and benefits and finds that having a few less pandas might be worth the extra few kilometers of development.

 

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