By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The dappled forests pandas need to live and breed are being destroyed faster inside China's flagship nature preserve than before the park was created, says a sobering study which shows that just creating parkland isn't enough to protect endangered species.
The problem: an almost doubling of the human population living inside the Wolong Nature Reserve, people who cut wood from endangered pandas' best-quality habitats, a joint U.S.-China research team reports today in the journal Science.
The finding raises serious questions for environmentalists about how to manage nature preserves worldwide, to balance the needs of local residents with those of fast-disappearing species.
"We were surprised" at the extent of forest destruction, said lead researcher Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University. "We always perceived that if you designate a protected area, then they (the pandas) are safe."
But he offers a solution: Provide better education for the mostly ethnic minority groups, largely Tibetans, who live inside the park, and many young people may voluntarily leave Wolong for jobs in China's cities, allowing the forest to recover.
"You protect the habitat; you help the people," said Liu, who hopes to discuss the idea with China's government soon.
The report comes just weeks after the World Wildlife Federation warned the giant panda still is facing extinction because its mountain forest home is disappearing. The wild panda population is estimated at 1,000.
Wolong, in southwest China's Sichuan province, is considered a top conservation park. At 500,000 acres, it is the largest panda preserve.
Satellite photos taken between 1965 and 1997 show the best-quality panda habitat disappeared faster after the park's 1975 creation - 52 acres a year before 1975 vs. 237 acres a year since then, the researchers report. The loss equals, in some spots exceeds, forest destruction in nearby areas that are not protected parkland, Liu said.
Wolong's wild panda population dropped from 145 in 1974 to 72 in 1986, the latest count, and Liu said there likely are even fewer today. Pandas need a temperate mountain forest, mixing evergreen and deciduous trees that provide dappled shade for the bamboo they eat and large trees inside in which to nest.
But the human population is booming. In 1975, 2,560 people lived in 421 households in Wolong. By 1995, there were 4,260 people in 904 households. Ethnic groups residing in Wolong are not subject to China's one-child policy.
More people use more wood to cook and heat; few can afford the electricity or coal used more commonly outside the park, Liu said. As they used up low-elevation forest near their homes, residents began cutting from the higher elevations pandas prefer, he said.
The park's 50,000 annual tourists play a role, too, buying large amounts of the local delicacy - smoked pork - that requires burning more wood, he said.
The study doesn't mean conservation is failing, but that preservation workers must address continuing dilemmas after parkland for any species in any country is set aside, said the World Wildlife Fund's panda conservation chief Karen Baragona. That includes training park workers to watch for problems from local residents or tourists, and helping locals earn a living without destroying forest land.
"People imagine a place called a protected area ... is this bubble," she said. "You can't do conservation in a vacuum. The human dimension is the wild card."
China's government in the 1990s tried to resettle some Wolong households, but failed largely because older people couldn't get used to living outside the park, Liu said. But if just 22 percent of Wolong's young people could relocate after attending college, the population would drop to a manageable 700 people by 2047, allowing the panda habitat to recover, he said. So his team, which includes Wolong researchers and a member of China's Academy of Sciences, recommends spending resettlement money on education instead.
