Pandas face uncertain future after China quake

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

BEIJING — About 35 pandas at a reserve in southwestern China face an uncertain future after nearly a quarter of their habitat was destroyed by last year's powerful earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people, according to a study published Monday.

Large parts of Sichuan province — where most of the world's remaining wild pandas live — were devastated by the massive May 12 earthquake, which sent landslides crashing into river valleys and leaving 5 million homeless.

The landslides and mudflows destroyed 23 percent of the panda's habitat in the south Min mountain region and the remaining bamboo-rich land was left fragmented, potentially threatening the pandas' way of life, said Xu Weihua, the study's lead author and an ecologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

"The Min mountains were the hardest-hit habitat during the earthquake and the isolation of the pandas into small groups caused by land fragmentation spells trouble for its inhabitants," said Xu, whose article written with six other researchers was published in the ecology journal, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.



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