Donation for panda-friendly ‘bamboo corridor’

Ya'an (CNS) -- Taiwan-owned RT-Mart and Coca-Cola on Thursday jointly donated 420,000 yuan to establish a "green bamboo corridor" at Niba Mountain, a habitat for giant pandas in Xingjing County of Sichuan Province.

The money will be used for a vegetation restoration project by the Chinese government, in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), to link isolated panda habitats via corridors of bamboo forest.

Ling Lin, project director of the WWF's Beijing office, said the bamboo corridors function like bridges connecting panda habitats, allowing the remaining pandas to extend their range, find more food and mate with other pandas. This helps increase their population and genetic diversity, Ling added.

Pandas in Sichuan currently live within a range of 20 habitats. The zones are like islands of wilderness that contain the two essential ingredients for panda survival – bamboo and other pandas. However, the zones are cut off from each other by roads, farms, cities and other human development.

Niba Mountain is a significant water conservation zone at the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and a key passage to connect two giant panda habitats: the Daxiangling Mountain Range and the Qionglai Mountain Range.