The giant panda is a National Treasure of China and a symbol of the world's endangered wildlife. About 2,000 giant pandas survive in the wild, primarily on government-protected reserves in the mountains of central and western China. Pandas have the most specialized diet of all bears; they rely almost completely on two species of bamboo that grow in the mixed forests of these regions.

This scene is set in the Wolong Reserve, which covers about 800 square miles (2,000 square km) in the Wolong Mountains, in the province of Sichuan. On the mountainsides behind the two giant pandas, brown-colored stands of arrow bamboo have flowered and died. The pandas have come down to feed on a different species of bamboo, called umbrella bamboo, that grows at lower elevations. Bamboo species go through periodic die-offs after they flower. Usually, most (but not all) plants in an area are affected at the same time. In the past, pandas coped with bamboo die-offs by simply moving to a new area, as these two have. Today, their options are far more limited.

Pandas Then and Now

Tens of thousands of years ago, giant pandas ranged over much of China south of the Huang Ho (Yellow River), feeding on their staple diet of arrow and umbrella bamboo. In the last several centuries, environmental changes and expanding human populations have seriously reduced the area in which these two bamboo species -- and therefore pandas -- can live. The panda's range now consists of discontinuous islands of forest habitat, surrounded by seas of humanity and inhospitable terrain. China has established reserves to help protect the giant panda, but without skilled environmental management, this unusual mammal -- a bear that only eats bamboo -- may be extinct in the wild by the turn of the century.

Panda distribution

Bamboo thicket

Bamboo die-off

About the Panda's Habitat