3/21/2014
BBC - Earth News - Wood harvest puts pandas at risk
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Page last updated at 08:52 GMT, Friday, 26 June 2009 09:52 UK
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Wood harvest puts pandas at risk
Matt Walker Editor, Earth News
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FROM OTHER SITES
A giant panda in the Wolong Nature Reserve
People and giant pandas are still coming into conflict.
So concludes a report into the firewood collecting habits of people
living in one of China's largest panda reserves.
It found that over the past 30 years, people living in rural
communities have ventured ever deeper into prime panda habitat to
collect wood to burn.
Unless more is done to meet the needs of these rural households,
the report says, they may continue to cut down prime forest, putting
pandas at risk.
Collecting wood to use as fuel is extremely common around the
developing world, with some reports suggesting that up to three
billion people still rely on wood as a main source of energy to cook
with and heat their homes.
Spatial and temporal patterns of fuelwood
collection in Wolong Nature Reserve: Implications
for panda conservation : Landscape and Urban
Planning
Guangming He
Wolong Nature Reserve (in Chinese)
Giant Panda Species Survival Plan
Panda Central: WWF China
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That in turn significantly impacts
wildlife habitats, which can
become degraded and fragmented
as trees are chopped down.
Guangming He of the Michigan
State University in East Lansing,
US led a team that examined how
the collection of firewood has
impacted panda habitat in the
Wolong Nature Reserve in
Chopped wood heading for the fire
Sichuan Province, China.
More than 15% of the nation's land area is legally protected in
thousands of nature reserves and national parks, and the Wolong
Nature Reserve is one of the largest dedicated to protecting the
giant panda, holding around 150, or roughly 10%, of the remaining
wild population of pandas.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8119000/8119402.stm
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3/21/2014
BBC - Earth News - Wood harvest puts pandas at risk
The team surveyed how the wood collecting habits of 200 rural
households in the reserve had changed since the 1970s.
"The impacts of fuelwood collection on panda habitat over time and
space were not known," says He.
His team found that over the past
If fuelwood collection
30 years, residents have
continues, then all wild pandas in
increasingly travelled further into
the reserve will be impacted the forest, to more remote and
Ecologist Guangming He
high elevations, to collect wood.
Trees such as oak, maple, birch, spruce and larch are chopped
down, and the logs driven home to be chopped down further into
firewood.
"Collectors were travelling longer distances to physically challenging
areas," says He. "In our case, to areas of high quality panda
habitat."
The number of sites where people cut down trees for firewood
increased threefold during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, says the report,
published in Landscape and Urban Planning by He and colleagues
based in the US and at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bejing and
China's Center for Giant Panda Research and Conservation based in
the Wolong Nature Reserve.
That's a problem for pandas, which occupy temperate montane
forests with dense stands of bamboo at altitudes of 1,200 to 4,100m.
Since the 1970s, roads have been constructed within the reserve,
including one that bisects it, to encourage local people to visit local
markets rather than rely on the forest for resources.
However, these roads extended
so far into the forest that they
helped residents reach previously
inaccessible trees, He's team
found.
But "the most surprising result
would be that many households
were aware of fuelwood collection
regulations and understood their
importance to panda
Wood rather than electricity still
provides most energy needs
conservation, but many of them
did not comply," He says.
China has recently provided extensive financial help to many rural
households in the Wolong Nature Reserve, helping them switch to
electricity rather than rely on firewood for their energy needs.
But more should be done to lower electricity prices to discourage
people from collecting wood, says He.
Otherwise, he says, "if fuelwood collection continues, then all wild
pandas in the reserve will be impacted."
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