Undoing the damage inflicted on vital panda
habitat is still a work in progress, but a new
discovery shows we’re on the right track.
In the 1970s, the Qinling section
of the Chinese National Highway
108 – a 3,200km road stretching
between the cities of Kunming and
Beijing – was opened to traffic.
But connecting humans came at the
expense of wildlife. By cutting through
the main habitat of giant pandas in the
southern Qinling mountains, the road
split the bears living in the region into two
separate populations. Such isolation has
a devastating impact on a species that
needs to be able to roam freely to find
new bamboo forests and potential mates.
A glimmer of hope came in 2000 when a
new road tunnel was opened, resulting in
a section of the highway being abandoned.
This raised the possibility that the two
isolated populations could be reunited.
But by that time, the forest had
been damaged by people collecting
wood and other resources.
Restoration by natural means
would take far too long for
the smaller of the two panda
populations in the east, which
had only 20 individuals and was
at high risk of local extinction.
It was clear that intervention was
needed before it was too late.
