Giant Panda’s Shrinking Habitat
Min Shan Region, China

The giant panda once lived throughout the mountainous bamboo forests of Burma, northern Vietnam, and most of eastern and southern China.  About half of the world’s remaining 1,100 wild pandas live in the Min Shan region of central China. 

Land clearing has reduced the giant panda’s habitat to isolated areas along mountain peaks. Deforestation also threatens the panda’s diet of wild bamboo plants, many species of which are at risk of extinction. 

If habitat loss and fragmentation continue to isolate giant panda populations from each other, they may face extinction within 100 years.

Image by NASA
Photos by: Calvin J. Hamilton; David Zaks