GIANT PANDA

The Giant Panda

The giant panda is the world's most famous conservation success story — and also one of its most misunderstood. After decades of decline, giant pandas were removed from the IUCN's 'Endangered' list in 2016 and reclassified as 'Vulnerable.' It was celebrated as a landmark achievement. But the reality is more complicated.

The wild giant panda population has grown to 1,864 — but those animals live in 20-30 isolated fragments of forest, cut off from each other by farmland and roads. Each fragment contains a small, inbred population that cannot easily mix with other fragments. Without corridors connecting these forest patches, pandas in one fragment cannot reach mates in another.

The panda is also a conservation paradox: it's a carnivore that eats almost nothing but bamboo, a diet so poor in nutrients that pandas must eat 26-84 pounds of bamboo every day.