Wood harvest puts pandas at risk
By Matt Walker People and giant pandas are still coming into conflict. So concludes a report into the firewood collecting habits of people living in one of China’s largest panda reserves. It found that over the past 30 years, people living in rural communities have ventured ever deeper into prime panda habitat to collect wood to burn. Unless more is done to meet the needs of these rural households, the report says, they may continue to cut down prime forest, putting pandas at risk. Collecting wood to use as fuel is extremely common around the developing world, with some reports suggesting that up to three billion people still rely on wood as a main source of energy to cook with and heat their homes. … Guangming He of the Michigan State University in East Lansing, US led a team that examined how the collection of firewood has impacted panda habitat in the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province, China. … “Collectors were travelling longer distances to physically challenging areas,” says He. “In our case, to areas of high quality panda habitat.” … But “the most surprising result would be that many households were aware of fuelwood collection regulations and understood their importance to panda conservation, but many of them did not comply,” He says. …
