Editor's note: A swallow that burrows into the eaves may be able to fly tens of thousands of kilometers across the technical flow of mountains and seas; a tree that grows quietly on the lawn, whose family has appeared on the earth more than 100 million years ago; you see that "pigeon" is actually a spotted dove... Colorful world, all things are born together, the world is inseparable, the life is endless, and people are not lonely.
The first phase of the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will be held in Kunming, Yunnan, China. Voice of China News Hyperlink specially curates "Life Story" - Zhang Jinshuo, deputy director and research librarian of the National Zoological Museum, and Shi Jun, member of the Science Communication Working Committee of the Botanical Society of China and popular science author "Vegetative Man", tells you.
Beijing, October 11 news According to the "News Hyperlink" of the Voice of China of the Central Radio and Television Corporation, the white paper "China's Biodiversity Conservation" was recently released. Its data show that the number of giant pandas in the wild in China has increased from 1114 to 1864 in 40 years. In addition, the number of artificially bred giant pandas has shown rapid and high-quality growth, and the level of threat of giant pandas has been reduced from "endangered" to "vulnerable", and the wild population has been released into the wild and successfully integrated into the wild population.
Can the wild population of more than 1800 be "downgraded"? What does it mean to go from "endangered" to "vulnerable"?
Image source: CCTV News
The level of threat is not just about the number
Giant pandas look round and tumbling, affectionately known as "rolling". However, the newborn panda cubs are very small, making people feel that they are easily harmed by the outside world and it is not easy to grow up healthy. Some people also sighed that it was no wonder that there were so few giant pandas.
The giant panda "Mei Qian" of the China Giant Panda Conservation and Research Center gave birth to a cub at the Walnut Ping Base in Wolong (Source: CCTV)
At a state-council press conference in July this year, Cui Shuhong, director of the Department of Natural Ecology and Conservation of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said that the number of giant pandas in the wild reached more than 1,800, and the level of threat was reduced from "endangered" to "vulnerable". At that time, many netizens sincerely asked in the comments: "When can I get one hand?" ”
The IUCN Red List of Species Endangerment Levels and Criteria, prepared by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, divides global species into: extinction, wild extinction, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, near-threaten, non-threatened, data-deficient and unassessed.
In fact, in 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced that giant pandas are no longer among the world's endangered animals, from "endangered" to "vulnerable". At the time, the updated introduction on the Red List read: The number of giant pandas has increased as a result of effective forest protection measures and reforestation.
In February 2015, the results of the fourth national giant panda survey were released. The survey results show that by the end of 2013, the number of wild giant pandas in the country reached 1864, an increase of 268 over the third survey, an increase of 16.8%.
Zhang Jinshuo, deputy director and research librarian of the National Zoological Museum, said that the level of threat to species is not simply based on the number of species.
In addition to the steady increase in numbers, Zhang Jinshuo pointed out: "Scientists studying the genome of giant pandas have found that the genetic diversity of giant pandas is very high, even higher than that of animals such as golden snub-nosed monkeys, and their own reproductive ability is stronger than we thought." ”
Therefore, Zhang Jinshuo believes that as long as there is a good living environment and there is not much human interference, the speed of the giant panda's recovery of the population is still relatively fast: "It has a tenacious and stronger survivability."
Newborn giant pandas (Source: Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base website)
Coerced "demotion", protection not "demotion"
In 2016, the IUCN reported that the improvement of the living conditions of giant pandas shows that the Chinese government's efforts to protect giant pandas are effective.
At present, the number of wild and artificial giant pandas in China is about 2500. Zhang Jinshuo said that there are more people studying and protecting giant pandas than there are giant pandas in China, and there is sufficient support in terms of human, material and financial resources. Such conservation efforts are also one of the reasons why giant pandas are considered to have a low risk of extinction.
However, even so, Zhang Jinshuo still stressed that giant pandas are still very rare and precious. At present, giant pandas are still listed as national first-level protected animals and recorded in the "List of Wild Animals under National Key Protection".
The "downgrading" of the degree of threat to giant pandas does not mean that the protection of giant pandas will be reduced, and the protection level will be lowered.
Protection still has a long way to go and cannot be relaxed.
Giant panda specimen (Source: National Zoological Museum public number)
Producer: Guo Jing
Reporter: Liu Fei, Fu Zhao
Editor: Yang Yang, Hejia, Yang Ran