ENVIRONMENT

A new national park will connect 67 separate reserves, in the hopes of increasing the world’s panda population through continuous habitat. (Fast Company)

Can you manage a successful panda park? Try our game to find out!

Teachers, scroll down for a quick list of key resources in our Teachers Toolkit, including today’s simple MapMaker Interactive map.

Discussion Ideas

• A new national park in China will unite 67 panda reserves (!) in a protected area spanning 27,133 square kilometers (10,476 square miles). Why is one big park a more effective conservation strategy than the dozens of smaller reserves?
  • healthier environment. Giant pandas are generally solitary animals, meaning they spend most of their lives alone. Pandas historically have large home ranges, so they can roam around without bumping into any other pandas.
  • breeding. A big protected area will both increase the potential for natural breeding and decrease the potential for inbreeding. “Pandas don’t breed often–each female is only fertile for a day or a day and a half each year, and might give birth once every two years–and as populations have become more fragmented, the chances of inbreeding have risen.”
  • food. Climate change is shifting where bamboo, pandas’ primary food source, can grow. “Over the next 80 years, more than a third of panda habitat may become too hot for bamboo to grow. The plans for the park are ‘setting up a network of places where they can eat,’ says Robert Tansey, a senior advisor on China for The Nature Conservancy.”

• How will the park address the existing human settlements between and around the existing preserves?
  • As the Fast Company article points out, the Chinese government has no problem relocating people who are in the way of major projects. More than a million people were forced to relocate during the 17 years it took to complete the enormous Three Gorges Dam, for example.
  • Federal, local, and state governments are working to establish a geotourism industry in the area. This may include hotels, restaurants, guided tours, camping, research facilities, and educational spaces.

• How did U.S. parks inspire the design of the new panda reserve in China?
  • During a tour of California parks, Chinese officials took note of how facilities outside the park supported wildlife inside it. For instance:
    • “At a wildlife refuge near Sacramento, they saw how different parcels of land were connected with pathways for wildlife, and how those outside the park also helped–rice farmers in the area, for example, now leave out vegetation longer than they would have otherwise to support migrating birds.”
    • “[I]n the Santa Monica Mountains, for example, where mountain lions live next to Los Angeles neighborhoods, a bridge may be built to help the animals cross an eight-lane freeway.”

TEACHERS TOOLKIT

Fast Company: China’s New Panda Park Will Be The Size Of Massachusetts

Nat Geo: Giant Pandas: Into the Wild game

Nat Geo: Modern and Historic Panda Ranges map