"They're so cute!" That's what many people think when they see a
picture of a giant panda bear. These bears have a thick coat of white
fur with black fur around their ears, eyes, legs, and shoulders.
Giant panda bears live in dense bamboo forests in China.
Bamboo is the main food source for pandas. Almost every
meal a panda eats is bamboo. A panda spends about 14
hours a day eating. During that time, it will eat between 12
and 38 kilograms of bamboo. Pandas usually prefer to eat
bamboo shoots, which are the fresh new tips of growth.
They then eat the leaves and stems. Pandas eat so much
bamboo because they do not digest most of what they eat.
There are 600 to 700 different kinds of bamboo. Pandas
eat many kinds of bamboo, but they particularly prefer two
kinds—the arrow bamboo and the umbrella bamboo.
Unfortunately, bamboo trees are quickly disappearing as
the population in China continues to increase. Workers
clear bamboo forests to make way for towns, cities, farms,
and factories. Farmers and loggers usually remove arrow
bamboo from forests on the lower slopes of mountains.
New trees can grow to replace a forest that has been
cleared. However, it takes many years for the new forests to
replace the old ones. Farmers and loggers are clearing
bamboo forests faster than new trees can replace the ones
that have been cut down. As a result, pandas have a
difficult time getting enough bamboo to survive. As their
food supply grows smaller, the panda population also
grows smaller. The population is so small that the giant
panda bear is listed as an endangered species.
Recently, the Chinese government began a program to help the
giant panda. In 2005, China set up over 50 panda preserves.
People cannot cut down any trees in these preserves. Unfortunately,
only about 60 percent of the pandas live in these preserves. The rest
still live in forests where people are clearing the land. Today, there
are only about 1,600 pandas living in Chinese forests. About 160
live in zoos. Over time, some of these zoo pandas may have
offspring that can be released back into the panda preserves.
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