Habitat

The Giant Panda inhabits remote mountainous areas, where bamboo is found in dense stands underneath an often dominant coniferous canopy. Great stands of these conifers tower over the bamboo and all thrive in this cool, wet environment.

The present range of the Giant Panda is comprised of six noncontiguous areas in the mountainous regions of China's southern edge of the Tibetan plateau and include the following areas: the southern slopes of the Qinling Mountains in the Shaanxi province, the Min Mountains of the southern Gansu and northern Sichuan provinces, and the Daxiang, Xiaoxiang and Daliang ranges of the Sichuan province (Schaller et al. 1985). Twelve panda reserves are found within these regions, and together these six areas total approximately 30,000 sq. km.

Within these areas Pandas inhabit bamboo at altitudes between 1200 - 3500m, though there is evidence that they may move outside this range on occasion (Giant Panda Expedition 1974; Sheldon 1937). The upper limit of their altitudinal range is determined by the tree line (in this case the bamboo line), and the lower line is determined by human habitation (because most human habitation in the region is in the valleys).

Historically, Giant Pandas inhabited a much broader geographic range. Panda fossils have been found throughout the eastern provinces of China, south to Burma, and as far north as Beijing (Schaller et al. 1985; Roberts 1988). Loss of this habitat is widely believed to be the result of climatic shifts in the late Pleistocene. More recently, pandas were found in the Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou, and Yunnan provinces of China but they have not been found in these provinces for the last 2,000 years. This habitat was no doubt lost as a result of the relentless encroachment of human activity on panda habitat since the Holocene began. In this photo, farmers in the Sichuan Province have begun to terrace up a mountainside to expand their farming operations.

Bibliography:

Roberts, L. 1988. Conservationists in Panda-monium. Science 241:529-531.

Schaller, G.B., H. Jinchu, P. Wenshi, Z. Jing. 1985. The Giant Pandas of Wolong. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. IL.