Narrative Essay On Giant Panda example essay topic

565 words
The giant panda is perhaps the most popular endangered species there is. It is indeed the most desired animal by all zoos, and perhaps the most difficult to recreate its natural habitat. Recreating its natural habitat is such a difficult task for many reasons. First the giant panda is only found in the remote bamboo forest of southwestern China. This is a cold damp coniferous forest that is able to support the growth of bamboo, which makes up over 99% of their diet. In order to preserve the giant panda I feel game preserves are much more effective than zoos.

I would make a preserve on a high elevated (1,200- 3,500 meters) mountain in southwestern China. This would let them live in the geographical location they are already adapted to while keeping the climate they are adapted to as well. In this preserve it is necessary to have very large amounts of bamboo because a giant panda can eat from 26-35 pounds of bamboo leaves and stems or 84 pounds of bamboo shoots per a day. When dealing with an animal that is capable of eating 40% of its body weight in bamboo shoots it is rather obvious that planting plenty of bamboo will be a constant concern at my preserve. Next at the preserve I hope to captive breed the pandas. There are many other captive breeding studies going on in many other reserves.

My plan for captive breeding is this. First I start with one male and one female at my reserve. Around age 5 the pandas are sexually mature and ready to breed. Hopefully my couple will breed and have a healthy baby cub. When the cub is born I will leave the baby with the mother for at least 18 months because this is the required time for the mother to care for the cub.

When the cub is ready to leave the mother I will look at other reserves for a solitary male or female that may mate with the new panda. Then I will send the new panda to a different reserve to find a mate. This will increase the panda population and help prevent inbreeding. With all the reserves mating the couples they have and then sending the new pandas to find mates the giant panda population should grow tremendously. My preserve will be rather large because the pandas need 1.8-3.3 square miles to live all though their living space does often over lap in the wild. For my two pandas at my reserve I will have 5 square miles of land for the creatures to live, this will be plenty of room for these bears to roam and wonder.

Maternal care is important in giant pandas so the young will be left with the mothers for approximately 18 months. The existing size in the wild is around 1,000 while there are about 800 in reserves. In conclusion since this animal is primarily endangered because of habitat destruction, a game preserve protecting their land will help increase the population greatly. Also my game preserve will protect the animals from poachers and there will always be an abundant amount of bamboo ready for them so this lovable bear will never have to g.