Saving Giant Pandas Essay Example

Have you ever seen a panda? If you have you are lucky! But over time many pandas' habitats have been destroyed or cut down, this has had a massive impact on the population of pandas. Bears have been losing their food resources, their homes, and places to have birth. Without these necessary resources, these raccoon-like bears may continue to lose their habitats and will die off.  China has also made many efforts to help pandas. 

Pandas face many dangers, and one of them is the lack of food resources. Pandas have a very flexible diet and eat almost anything, but their main diet is bamboo. The loss of bamboo is due to people cutting it down for farming, materials, and places to live. This evidence from the source helped me infer this, “People were cutting down the bamboo forest for firewood and they cleared the land for farming.” This has affected the population of these beautiful bamboo eaters. In March 2015, around 2000 pandas were recorded in the world. Pandas have been suffering and they should be protected as soon as possible. Another massive problem pandas face is shelter. Many of these beautiful bears have lost their shelter and places to breed due to people cutting down and destroying the bamboo forest for many reasons including shelter, farming, timber, firewood, and many more materials. I believe red pandas should be kept in the zoo because it is categorized as a vulnerable species. The population of the red panda is fewer than 10,000, some say as few as a couple of thousand, remain in the wild. Almost 50% of the red panda live in the Eastern Himalayas in China. The loss of nesting trees and bamboo is causing a decline in red panda populations across much of their range because their forest home is being cleared. Also, the red panda is often caught in traps and dies even though the traps were meant for wild pigs and deer. Also, they are poached for their distinctive pelts in China and Myanmar. To prevent further decrease in the red panda’s population, they should be protected, maybe in the enclosures. The captive population of red pandas provides a backup population for the wild population. The red panda lives for 13.4 years in enclosures, while in the wild the average lifespan is 8 to 10 years. Also, the gained knowledge about the panda’s situation may awake interest from visitors to the zoo to help save them. The red pandas live in the Eastern Himalayas where there are a lot of bamboos. They eat the youngest, most tender shoots and leaves of the bamboo plant which they like a lot. They have also lost their places to breed or give birth. Basically, without places to give birth, many pandas cannot give birth. I believe this is horrible for all the pregnant pandas and just pandas in general. I can connect with the texts because when I went to a forest in Costa Rica our trip guide told us that there were a lot of endangered species. He told us there were endangered because of people taking their land for farming, shelter, and hunting.

China has also done many efforts to help these protected species. About 100 live in zoos all over the world. As stated in source 1, in 2016, the environmental organization changed the status of red pandas from an endangered species to a vulnerable species. To save the giant panda’s habitat, the government has set 13 pandas' nature reserve areas. In the areas, farming fields have been left to grow back as forest. Trees and bamboo have grown well, and the habitat is recovering. Also, farming practices around the forests have been reduced or separated from the reserve areas. China has also prohibited logging into these resources. In the past, there was much hunting of giant bamboo eaters and smuggling of their pelts and body parts, so China's government established laws and severe penalties to protect giant pandas from hunting and smuggling. 

In conclusion, pandas face many dangers, I believe we should stand up for what is right and save pandas!