I stumbled across a small flash game online on the Smithsonian National Zoological Park's website that is based around protecting wildlife in China. It's very whimsical and childish, but it introduced me to Habitat Corridors and Core Areas. The game can be found here.
Somewhat surprisingly it turned out Habitat Corridors are actually a genuinely real thing (although generally referred too as wildlife corridors) and are important to conservation.
"Wildlife corridors are remnant habitat, regenerated habitat or artificially created habitat that links larger areas of wildlife habitat. Corridors provide a means by which animals and plant seeds can move between larger areas of habitat that are their refuges, within an otherwise uninhabitable environment. Wildlife corridors provide a mechanism for the reduction or moderation of the adverse effects of habitat fragmentation by facilitating the dispersal of individuals between areas of remaining habitat. This enables individuals to re-colonise habitat patches which have become locally extinct and increases opportunities for long term genetic interchange. Wildlife corridors play a crucial role in maintaining connections between animal and plant populations that would otherwise be isolated and at greater risk of local extinction. Corridors also provide supplementary feeding habitat for animals."
These corridors mean that, in theory, having roads or farms within wildlife territories isn't that much of a problem as they're still connected. However, this doesn't account for the loss of total surface area that is a result of having a huge gap in the middle of a reserve, or the spaces that animals won't inhabit due to noise pollution.
For example, if the green represents a panda habitat and the red represents the are required to cut down for a road, the link between them would be the wildlife corridor, at this point the road would be particularly narrow and unmaintained to lower the changes it'd make to the wildlife. When you consider that the yellow area may then become uninhabitable on a permanent basis because of noise pollution, all of a sudden you've lost about a third of your habitat and left the remaining habitat more isolated than it was initially.
Core areas, it turns out, aren't quite as technical a term as habitat corridors, but they reflect the protected areas of giant panda territory. Taking the same example, if the red circle signified a key protected area where humans couldn't interfere with the wildlife, it would secure the surrounding area more because there's less potential for development.
Protected Areas
Having worked with the Chinese government, WWF have now established 62 reserves where the Pandas territory is protected. This area is believed to contain 75% of the wild Panda population and covers 60% of the pandas habitable area.
The below diagram shows where Pandas live now in the wild compared to where they used to live, which shows the damage humans have done to their territory.
Given how much space Pandas need for their bamboo supply to be constantly growing, and the tiny amount of space the habitat takes up in comparison to the size of the country, it's important that the remaining areas of unprotected habitat remain and are connected by habitat corridors. If 25% of the wild population are living in unprotected areas, then protecting those areas immediately saves 400 Pandas.
The protected areas that pandas live in total over 10,500 square kilometres. Protecting the other 40% (another 7,000 square kilometres) not only protects the other 400 or so Pandas, but also provides a habitat for another potential 600 that could potentially be released into the wild, as an individual Panda rarely claims over 7 square kilometres territory.
Current ownership of land in China and the laws that surround the uses of the forest mean that 15% of the Pandas habitat is currently under threat of deforestation, that's over a third of the unprotected habitat, an area which could easily hold over 300 Pandas.
It is estimated that the Chinese government has spent $100 million so far on buying habitat to protect for the Pandas, and it's estimated that another $250 million would be needed to buy the 15% that's currently at risk. This is a realistic possibility given that the Chinese economy is the second strongest in the world and the effort that the government have already put in to Panda conservation. The value of the Chinese economy is estimated to be about $2.35 trillion, so the $250 million represents a tiny amount in relative terms.
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