People and pandas - often conflicting needs

A long history

People have shared the environment with the panda for centuries and have relied on the area's natural resources for their livelihood. As the population has grown, many human activities have become unsustainable and significantly eroded the panda's habitat.


Millions of people live in and around the panda's habitat, many of them in cities of Xi'an and Chengdu. As economic activity increases, more people will continue to move to the area and will add more pressure to an already burdened ecosystem.


Economic development & tourism
When logging in the panda's habitat was banned in 1998, new threats emerged. Mining, hydropower development and tourism have increased to remedy the revenue loss from the logging ban.

These activities along with farming and road construction have replaced commercial logging as the major threats to forests and wildlife in the area.



Ineffective reserves have led to...
Although there are a number of established reserves in the panda’s habitat range, in the past there had been little in the way of effective management and enforcement. As such, the ecological integrity of these areas has continued to decline as a result of illegal logging and poaching.


...illegal harvesting and...
In the Minshan Mountains, there are over 5,000 plant species and 75% are used in Chinese traditional medicine. The mountains are also home to over 300,000 people, many of whom live in poverty, and they rely on the harvesting of traditional medicines as an important source of income.  However, the harvesting has disturbed the panda habitat and has led to the extinction of local plant species.


...poaching
Some poaching of pandas still occurs, and even low levels of poaching can have grave consequences for such an endangered species. Poaching incurs a 10 year jail sentence and although it is rare for poachers  to intentionally kill a panda, some are injured or killed in traps and snares set for other animals, such as musk deer and black bears.