Evaluating the Effects of Human Factors on the Giant Panda Habitat
Victoria Swander
Physical Geography
Dr. Heidi Lannon
October 24, 2014
The title of the journal article I chose is "A Framework for Evaluating the Effects of Human Factors on Wildlife Habitat: The Case of the Giant Pandas", published in Conservation Biology. The researchers developed a conceptual framework in order to estimate the human impact on a particular wildlife habitat. They applied the framework to a case study involving human activities on a nature reserve in China influencing a giant panda habitat and analyzed the results to discover the degree of these activities. Finally, they considered a number of socially and economically driven policies to potentially reduce this impact in the future.
Wolong is home to about 4,000 residents, most of whom are farmers. While the Han ethnic majority group comprises over 90% of mainland China, the reserve is unique in that three minority groups (Tibetan, Chang, and Hui) make up about 70% of its population. This is significant because China's one-child policy is not applied to ethnic minorities, leading to high birth rates and a quickly rising human population in the reserve. Major human activities in the area are farming, the consumption of fuelwood for cooking and heating purposes, and the construction of houses and roads.
Data was gathered from a variety of sources: population and census reports, birth and death records, agricultural surveys, and in-person interviews. Random plots were sampled within the reserve to collect more information on the environment. Aerial maps and historical data were merged into a Geographic Information System (GIS). The potential panda habitat was divided into 4 categories (highly suitable, suitable, marginally suitable, and unsuitable) and integrated with degrees of human influence (strong, moderate, weak, and none) to discover the actual range of panda habitat. System modeling provided considerations of the long term (a span of 50 years) future effect on the habitat on Wolong. Finally, six scenarios revolving around the implementation of socioeconomic policies were projected and analyzed.
This framework describes the factors of human population, forest systems, wildlife habitat, and socioeconomic policies, as well as how these factors influence one another. It was applied to a case study involving the giant panda habitat of Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province, China. Wolong is the largest panda reserve in China with an area of approximately 500,000 acres, and home to about ten percent of the world panda population. It is distinguished by a range of climatic zones and altitudes (providing low valleys and high mountains) as well as forest types (evergreen, deciduous broadleaf, conifer, and mixtures of these).
The main finding of the report was that the habitat has been negatively impacted and would continue to degrade as the human population and activity increased. About 41% of the reserve would be suitable to pandas. When human influences were considered, the habitat shrank significantly. The research also proposed that encouraging the emigration of the youth (ages 17-25 years old) would be the most beneficial to the giant panda habitat. Youth emigration would also be the most efficient means of reducing the local population, as previous efforts had focused on encouraging household emigration and had not been particularly successful.
Something I didn't know was the depth of the interconnectedness of the different systems established in the framework. The human population interacts with the forest through usage of the land (which in turn shapes the wildlife habitat), but can itself be affected through the resources available from the forest. Socioeconomic policies can directly affect the population and indirectly impact other systems, but are limited by feedback from the wildlife habitat. A later addition to the study also included the potential impact of "natural factors". This can be directly seen in Wolong as a result of the 2008 earthquake. The earthquake resulted in the deaths of some workers and the damage of several giant panda habitats, necessitating the temporary relocation of the pandas to another reserve.
This research can be applied in a practical manner to a variety of situations and environments. The results of the case study can be employed in suggesting strategies to help reduce the human impact on the panda habitat while also considering the need for human development in the area. The framework itself can be applied to any number of potential case studies involving the habitats of other species around the world. The potential for further research could include venturing into further depth in regards to the proposed socioeconomic policies. For example, four of the scenarios propose to phase out the consumption of fuelwood and replace it with electricity as a way to reduce the impact on the environment, but the potential effects of this method were not considered. The researchers also proposed youth emigration, but failed to expand on how this could be undertaken realistically and effectively. I was also curious to know why there was no mention of tourism on the reserve. Wolong is the largest, most well known panda reserve in China. Over 100,000 people visit the reserve annually, yet there was no mention of this at all. The implications of tourism and its effects are different than that of the impact of local residents. There is still much to consider in terms of research in establishing effective policies to the benefit of the populations, both human and panda.
Bibliography:
1. Liu, J., Ouyang, Z., Taylor, W., Groop, R., Tan, Y., & Zhang, H. (1999). A Framework for Evaluating the Effects of Human Factors on Wildlife Habitat: The Case of Giant Pandas. Conservation Biology, 13(6), 1360-1370.
Other images:
(1) Manyman. "Giant Panda eating Bamboo." 2011. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giant_Panda_eating_Bamboo.JP