The giant panda, long the face of the conservation movement, has been taken off the endangered species list by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
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Despite the growing panda population, mainly in captive breeding programs, the State Forestry Administration, which oversees animal conservation efforts in China, said that it was “too early” for the IUCN to downgrade the conservation status of the animal, official Xinhua News Agency reported on September 5.
“For over 50 years, the giant panda has been the globe’s most beloved conservation icon”, said Marco Lambertini, director general of the environmental group World Wildlife Fund.
But there was some bad news. Other factors like climate change in 80 years can destroy one-third of bamboos that serve as the animal’s natural habitat.
Speaking to the AP, they say that the move may be a positive sign, but conservation efforts need to continue at the same pace as before, or the panda risks slipping back towards extinction.
In Hawaii, about 90 percent of native plants are threatened with extinction because of invasive species like rats, pigs and non-native plants, the IUCN said.
Meanwhile, IUCN downgraded the eastern gorilla, a victim of African civil wars and hunting, to “critically endangered”.
Since then we’ve been working with the government on initiatives to save giant pandas and their habitat, including helping to establish an integrated network of giant panda reserves and wildlife corridors to connect isolated panda populations.
The reclassification of central Africa’s Eastern Gorilla as critically endangered follows a population decline of more than 70% in the last two decades, leaving its population below 5,000.
One of those subspecies, Grauer’s gorilla, lost 77% of its population since 1994, declining from 16,900 individuals to just 3,800 in 2015, the IUCN said. It’s nearly impossible to account for every single plant and animal on the planet, but the World Wildlife Fund estimates anywhere between 200 and 100,000 species go extinct every year. The organization has observed increased forest cover in China, providing more potential habitat to giant pandas.
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The other subspecies, the mountain gorilla, has been faring better.
