A shortage of bamboo supplies due to climate change 'unlikely'

Experts have rejected a report that climate change threatens to drive giant pandas to extinction in the wild as rising temperatures wipe out bamboo stocks for the endangered species.

They say the animals are unlikely to suffer from hunger.

Bamboo, the panda's staple food, is growing well in major panda habitats, said Ouyang Zhiyun, chief of the State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Zhang Hemin, chief of the administrative bureau of the Wolong National Nature Reserve, China's largest base for captive pandas, said the animals eat many varieties of bamboo, and will find enough food even if supplies of one variety fall.

"China has 37 bamboo species located at elevations from 400 to 3,500 meters. If certain species die within 100 years, other species might thrive to fill the gap," Zhang said.

Their remarks were in response to a report published by the Daily Telegraph in Britain based on research published by the journal Nature Climate Change on Nov 4.

The research focused on the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi province, home to some 275 wild pandas or 17 percent of the wild panda population.

Ouyang said that rising temperatures are likely to cause bamboo to grow at higher altitudes in the Qinling Mountains, but supplies were unlikely to drop.

Qinling is home to at least three major types of bamboo — arrow, wooden and dragon-head, covering a total of 250,000 hectares and growing at 800 meters above sea level.

More than two decades of panda conservation efforts have seen the population of captive pandas rise to 341 worldwide from fewer than 100 in 1990.

China has set up 64 giant panda nature reserves in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, covering 60 percent of panda habitats and more than 70 percent of the wild panda population. About 1,600 pandas are living in the wild.