China's panda sanctuaries at risk from illegal logging, says Greenpeace

Illegal loggers are ransacking sanctuaries in southwest China that are home to more than 30% of the world’s pandas, according to a Greenpeace investigation.

The two-year study found that more than 1,800 football pitches of natural forest in a Unesco world natural heritage site had been illegally razed.

According to the environmental group, nearly 1,280 hectares (3,200 acres) of natural forest in the Sichuan giant panda sanctuaries have been illegally felled, putting endangered plant and animal species, including the giant panda, at risk.

Local businesses and authorities have been exploiting a legal loophole in forest regulations to log with impunity in the wildlife-rich area between the Chengdu plateau and the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, Greenpeace claimed in its report.

“The extent of illegal logging in this precious area is shocking,” said Pan Wenjing, deputy head of the forest and ocean unit of Greenpeace’s East Asia branch.

“These findings seriously undermine the Chinese government’s efforts to preserve its and the world’s natural heritage.”

The investigation showed that Chinese regulations, introduced in 1998 and strengthened in 2012, to prevent the felling of natural forests for profit had failed to stop the logging.

The Sichuan giant panda sanctuaries are home to more than 30% of the world’s pandas, as well as other globally endangered animals such as the red panda, the snow leopard and the clouded leopard.

Greenpeace said a third of China’s natural forests were at risk of deforestation as a result of the loophole, which allows “low yield” natural forest to be felled and turned into commercial plantations under the guise of forest regeneration.

The activists used remote sensing, field surveys and spatial analysis to uncover illegal logging activity, as they have done in previous investigations in Yunnan and Zhejiang province.

“In terms of forest conservation, the most pressing and most serious problem facing China right now is deforestation of natural forest in the name of improving low-yield timber forest,” said Zhou Lijiang, the deputy chief engineer at the Sichuan province forestry investigation and planning institute and a key forestry regulations advisor.

Earlier this year, an investigation by China’s state forestry administration (SFA) found that by the end of 2013 China had 1,864 giant pandas alive in the wild, an increase of 268 individuals, or 16.8%.

But the survey also showed that 223 of the endangered wild giant pandas, or 12% of the population, are at high risk due to pressure from factors such as habitat loss.