Development of Giant Panda Nature Reserves in China: Achievements and Problems

Song, Zhenjiang; Zhou, Wei; Gao, Lan

doi:10.1561/112.00000523

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The fences that are built to delineate protected areas affect the ecological processes of their habitats to some extent, reducing the vegetation cover [47]. Simultaneously, ineffective protected areas may have resulted from the late establishment of protection, lags in policies, or inadequate management and control systems [48]. Economic activities to improve livelihoods have generated disturbances in wetland and forest ecology protected areas, affecting the ecological environments of these protected areas [49].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of the Ecological Protection Effectiveness of Protected Areas Using Propensity Score Matching: A Case Study in Sichuan, China

Zhang

Tang

Pan

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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Protected areas constitute a global strategic resource for enhancing the effectiveness of ecological protection, which can alleviate the impact of unsustainable human production and living activities on the ecological environment. However, the spatiotemporal evolution of ecological protection effectiveness needs to be quantitatively revealed. The net primary productivity (NPP) of plants is an important measure of the effectiveness of ecological protection efforts. The main purpose of this study is to use the relative change in the annual average NPP to evaluate the ecological protection effectiveness of protected areas. We compared the historical changes in the annual average NPP of protected areas in Sichuan Province from 2000 to 2019. We added the spatial coordinates to the impact factor system and adopted propensity score matching (PSM) in a quasi-natural experimental method to determine the experimental group and the control group. The ecological protection effectiveness of the protected areas in the study area in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2019 was measured and classified into three types of changes in protection effectiveness, namely effective, ineffective, or fluctuating. According to the administrative level, type, and spatial distribution, we determined the number and type of changes in the protection effectiveness of different protected areas. The results show that the annual average NPP of the protected areas in Sichuan Province generally fluctuated. The annual average NPP increased in 95.47% of the total protected area and decreased in 4.53%. The overall protection effectiveness of protected areas was positive and significant and gradually improved. Effective protected areas at the national, provincial, and county levels accounted for 40.27% of the total number of protected areas, and the other 14.77% of effective protected area was managed at other administrative levels. Among the different types of protected areas, the proportion of effective protected areas was highest in wild animal protected areas, followed by forest ecology protected areas, wild plant protected areas, and wetland ecology protected areas. The results of this study can provide an important reference for the verification and improvement of the ecological protection effectiveness of various protected areas.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of the Ecological Protection Effectiveness of Protected Areas Using Propensity Score Matching: A Case Study in Sichuan, China

Zhang

Tang

Pan

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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“…Since the 1960s, protection of the giant panda has been undertaken and gradually expanded in China, especially after the construction of the Giant Panda National Park in 2017. There has been marked improvement in the breeding capacity, recovery of severely fragmented habitats, and a reduction in the high inbreeding risk of the population ( Kang and Li, 2019 ; Song et al, 2021 ). However, the vulnerability of the giant panda remains a global concern, because they have an exclusively bamboo diet despite a carnivore-like intestine and a very poor ability to digest bamboo.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An amateur gut microbial configuration formed in giant panda for striving to digest cellulose in bamboo: Systematic evidence from intestinal digestive enzymes, functional genes and microbial structures

Zhan

Wang²,

Yao

et al. 2022

Front. Microbiol.

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The giant panda has been considered to maximize nutritional intake including protein and soluble carbohydrates in bamboo, but it has spent almost entire life with the high-cellulose diet. Whether giant panda is still helpless about digesting bamboo cellulose or not is always contentious among many researchers around the world. The work has systematically clarified this issue from the perspectives of digestive enzymes, functional genes, and microbial structures in giant panda gut. The intestinal cellulase activities of panda increase with bamboo consumption, performing that the endoglucanase activity of adults reaches 10-fold that of pandas first consuming bamboo. More abundance and types of microbial endoglucanase genes occur in bamboo-diet giant panda gut, and the corresponding GH5 gene cluster is still efficiently transcribed. Gut microbes possessing cellulose-degrading genes, belong to the phylum Firmicutes and some Bacteroidetes, but their structural and functional configurations are insufficient to completely degrade cellulose. Therefore, giant panda is striving to digest cellulose in bamboo, but this adaptation is incomplete. This is probably related to the short straight carnivore-like gut structure of the giant panda, preventing the colonization of some efficient functional but anaerobic-preferred flora.

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Quantifying the Evolution of Giant Panda Habitats in Sichuan Province under Different Scenarios

Song

Xiong

et al. 2022

Diversity

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The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a relic species in China and a flagship species in the field of endangered wildlife conservation. The conservation of the giant panda’s habitat has gained widespread attention for this reason. Historically, Chinese Giant Panda Nature Reserves are surrounded by communities and the resource utilization behavior of households disturbs the giant panda habitat. Changes in these communities and in Giant Panda Nature Reserves began around 2010, with the feminization and aging of the farm labor force. These changes brought different resource utilization behaviors that led to different evolutionary tendencies in giant panda habitats. This research study assesses the impact of these tendencies based on data from the fourth survey of the giant panda in the Sichuan Province and from geographic information data. The paper aims to uncover the internal mechanisms of farmers’ resource utilization behavior in terms of the changes wrought to giant panda habitats. The paper simulates the future habitat of the giant panda based on the LUCC (land use/cover change) model to identify anticipated changes in future landscape patterns and the habitat quality of giant pandas under the current scenarios. The paper analyzes the spatial-temporal change of landscape patterns through the land use transfer matrix, based on the Markov model. The results of the scenario analyses illustrate the spatial and temporal difference in habitat quality. The driving mechanism for landscape pattern change is explored using the logistic regression model. The paper simulates the variation tendency of giant panda habitats under differential labor force structures and resource utilization behavior based on the CA (cellular automata) model, with the robustness of the results verified by participatory experiment. Through four scenarios of simulated farm labor force structure and resource utilization behavior, results suggest that the quality of giant panda habitats in the future will be relatively high when workforce feminization and aging is intense and resource utilization behavior is weakened. The simulated results confirm that the current agricultural labor force structure can reduce the intensity of resource utilization behavior. In this scenario, disturbance to giant panda habitats would decrease and their quality would improve.

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Development of Giant Panda Nature Reserves in China: Achievements and Problems

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Assessment of the Ecological Protection Effectiveness of Protected Areas Using Propensity Score Matching: A Case Study in Sichuan, China

Assessment of the Ecological Protection Effectiveness of Protected Areas Using Propensity Score Matching: A Case Study in Sichuan, China

An amateur gut microbial configuration formed in giant panda for striving to digest cellulose in bamboo: Systematic evidence from intestinal digestive enzymes, functional genes and microbial structures

Quantifying the Evolution of Giant Panda Habitats in Sichuan Province under Different Scenarios

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