Red Panda Conservation & Science
Red pandas inhabit cool temperate bamboo forests in Sichuan
and Yunnan Provinces in China, in the Himalayas, and in Myanmar.
Sharing bamboo forests with giant pandas in parts of their
range, red pandas are suffering from the same effects of
habitat destruction, with a 40-percent population decrease
in China during the last 50 years.
Red pandas have been bred with some reliability in zoos throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. As they decline in the wild, continuing to maintain self-sustaining populations in zoos is a high priority as a hedge against extinction and to learn more about species biology.
National Zoo scientists have made many significant contributions to the biology of this species in the past 25 years. As part of the Red Panda Program, our scientists will be conducting new studies that will help us manage and preserve this charismatic species.
Relatively little is known about the environmental and social preferences of the red panda, including which species of bamboo it prefers, and whether this varies throughout the year as other foods become available—at the National Zoo, red pandas have eaten mulberries almost exclusively when they are in season. Many of these questions are similar to those we are working to answer for giant pandas. Because the two species share the same habitat, we will apply to the red pandas many of the same observational studies going on with the giant pandas.
Many of China’s giant panda nature reserves also support red pandas, but they have not been well studied. We plan to support field studies of the red panda by our colleagues in China, particularly in some of the more remote reserves. We will also export our considerable management and nutritional expertise with the species to our colleagues in Chinese zoos and breeding colonies.
Maintaining genetic diversity among zoo populations of red pandas is very important to the survival of these populations. But recently, high levels of infant mortality among red pandas, one result of reduced genetic diversity, suggests that inbreeding is a problem. Traditionally, reducing inbreeding has involved moving individuals from one zoo to another to spread valuable genes. But there now are alternative strategies—new technologies—that deserve attention.
To develop new technological approaches, we need to understand the red panda’s basic reproductive biology. There are powerful new tools that have not yet been applied to the red panda, including measuring hormonal patterns in males and females using noninvasive endocrine techniques. Resulting data are important to understanding the reproductive cycle and to developing methods of assisted breeding, especially artificial insemination. For this reason, new studies of red pandas will measure hormones, as well as study sperm and its ability to be frozen and later used for artificial insemination.
Our long-term goal will be to develop the technology to allow
the establishment of a genome resource bank for the red panda.
Once sperm (and eventually embryos)
are collected and frozen, the genes of those individuals are preserved forever
and can be reintroduced to the population at any time in the future. This ‘insurance
policy’ also can be used routinely to move genetic material, including
sharing with our colleagues in China, thereby simplifying the maintenance of
genetic diversity and avoiding the need to ship live animals.
