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  PlanetArk 20 Jun 06
Giant Panda's Future Looks Brighter - Study
Story by Belinda Goldsmith

BBC 19 Jun 06
Hope for future of giant panda
By Helen Briggs BBC News science reporter

Fears that the giant panda is on the brink of extinction may be unjustified, research suggests.

Scientists believe populations have been underestimated in past surveys and there may be as many as 3,000 pandas left in the wild. Numbers in reserves could be restored if conservation efforts continue, they write in Current Biology.

The panda once inhabited much of China but is now found only in the forested mountain areas of the country. Its survival has become a cause celebre of the conservation movement, attracting worldwide attention.

The giant panda has long suffered at the hands of poachers and loggers, and was hit by the large-scale die-off of bamboo in the 1980s. Numbers in the wild have been put at about 1,000 but the animal's elusive and wary nature has made it difficult to conduct accurate censuses.

Previous surveys have used conventional techniques, but researchers in China and the UK tried out a new hi-tech method based on analysing DNA recovered from panda droppings.

The results suggest that about 66 pandas live in the Wanglang Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province, more than twice as many as were estimated in a survey conducted in 1998.

The study also provides evidence that pandas in the most important habitat of its kind have not suffered genetically over this period - there is no evidence of the sort of inbreeding or low genetic diversity that might threaten the species' long-term survival.

"It seems, therefore, that the giant panda population in Wanglang has the potential to be restored if habitat protection, local socio-economic measures and population monitoring issues are resolved," the researchers say in Current Biology.

On the basis of the Wanglang findings, they estimate that there may be as many as 2,500 to 3,000 giant pandas left in the wild in the whole of China. It is good news for the future, they add, as long as the Chinese government continues with bans on poaching and deforestation in giant panda areas.

PlanetArk 20 Jun 06
Giant Panda's Future Looks Brighter - Study
Story by Belinda Goldsmith

NEW YORK - Giant pandas may not be in as much danger of extinction as feared with a new British-Chinese study finding there could be twice as many living in the wild as previously thought, scientists said on Monday.

"This finding indicates that the species may have a significantly better chance of long-term viability than recently anticipated, and that this beautiful animal may have a brighter future," the scientists said in a statement.

Until now scientists thought there were about 1,590 giant pandas living in reserves in the mountains of China. Pandas, one of the world's most endangered and elusive animals, are dependent on bamboo found in that area.

But scientists from Britain's Cardiff University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences now think there could be as many as 3,000 there after a survey using a new method to profile DNA from panda faeces revealed there was more than double the number of estimated pandas in one reserve.

"This was surprising and exciting. In our opinion, the same parameters can be applied across the whole mountain range," Mike Bruford, professor of biodiversity at Cardiff University's School of Biosciences, told Reuters.

Bruford said the scientists, whose findings will be published in journal Current Biology on Tuesday, stumbled across this discrepancy in the population as they were studying the movement of male and female pandas and their territorial instincts to understand their behavior.

The study found about 66 pandas are living in the Wanglang Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province -- and not 27 as estimated in the latest national survey that was conducted in 2002.

Bruford said there was no way that panda births or migration could account for so large a discrepancy and based on this finding, there may be 2,500 to 3,000 pandas in the wild.

Understanding population trends for giant pandas has been a major task for conservation authorities in China for about 30 years with three national surveys carried out but the terrain is hard to survey.

The first two surveys showed declines in numbers but the most recent survey showed signs of a recovery, helped by the Chinese government setting up a network of natural reserves and enforcing anti-poaching and anti-logging laws.

Bruford said the next step was to replicate the British/Chinese survey using its DNA method in other reserves. The challenge then is to think beyond keeping pandas in reserves and find ways to end their isolation because inbreeding and low genetic diversity remain a possible threat to the species' long-term survival, he added.

He said one way to do this would be to build corridors between the different panda reserves. "This (finding) means we have a halfway reasonable chance of long-term viability with conservation. It doesn't mean the panda is out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination but it gives us more time and makes a difference," Bruford told Reuters.

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