Red pandas need help
Red pandas need help!
Fauna and Flora International (FFI, for ease, and to save my paws), have emailed with details of their appeal to help red pandas. They say there could be as few as 2,500 red pandas left in the wild.
To help red pandas, FFI works closely with local communities in and around Imawbum National Park, ( granted official protection in 2020) and they secured the designation of a community-protected non-hunting zone to safeguard species such as the red panda, takin and Myanmar snub-nosed monkey.
Find out more about the red panda
Thanks to the civil unrest, there are no government rangers protecting red pandas in northern Myanmar. There are local protection teams, who don’t have enough resources to fund, train and equip patrols. Poachers are coming from China, thanks to strict enforcement there, to target wildlife.
FFI have written to supporters to help by donating for rations and essential equipment for patrol teams to find and remove the traps which litter their forests, and also to help disrupt the illegal wildlife trade – and reduce the demand which drives poaching.
Donations from us all will enable community species guardians to travel deep into the red pandas’ habitat. They may spend up to 10 days at a time there, away from loved ones, working to make life safer for red pandas and other animals in the forest.
But red pandas are threatened.
Poachers have worked out that red pandas use scent-sharing sites and so they lie in wait and strike when the animals are on the ground. FFI wants to identify and protect these areas as soon as they can. Skins sell for $1.50 – a live red panda can go for as little as $15. A huge bust of live red pandas who were taken alive discovered that 50% of them were sick and shaking when they were rescued. They all died soon afterwards.
And – many red pandas are taken by traps, mostly brought in from the Chinese border: the tiger mount trap, the conibear trap, the wire cage trap and the wire snare trap. They are incredibly brutal and designed to be strong enough to crush the leg of a 200kg bear. Red pandas can also be snared in wires along wildlife trails – and they can struggle for days in an attempt to get free.
Red pandas need to be kept below 28 degrees C, but many are headed for tourist destinations in hot countries – and forced into proximity with people which, given they are solitary animals, makes them very stressed.
Donations made to the appeal will help
Donations will equip patrols to get them into the mountains. They need motorbikes, fuel, food, boots and camping equipment, first aid supplies, camera traps, GPS devices, emergency response and rescue supplies for humans and animals.
Donations will remove deadly traps using specialist tools and protective equipment. Patrol teams will search the forest for them, record where they are and dismantle them fast. And they’ll remove those horrible wire snares which can leave animals trapped for days, injured and terrified. Evidence suggests that once these traps have been removed, the poachers don’t go back to put new ones in, because they don’t want to lose their equipment, so patrol teams can make an entire area safe.
Donations will help find the poachers using GPS, satellite phones, camera traps and informant networks. Donations will help to cultivate a network of local informants will help protection teams know when and where traffickers are intending to hit, so that illegal operations can be closed down. And teams will be able to move between trade hubs so that they can document evidence of illegal activity – and that will mean they can bring traffickers to justice. In some areas, the number of traps on one patrol fell from 40 to 50, to zero – and FFI says that this shows poachers won’t risk working where they know there is protection and enforcement.
Donations will help stop the demand for poaching red pandas, with community training and sustainable livelihoods. Many local people volunteer to be species guardians – and FFI want to work with them to reduce the destruction sugar plantations cause to habitats, and to find them sustainable agricultural practices. Donations will help provide fruit tree saplings and the training needed to grow them successfully. And training will also be given on how to spot threats to wildlife, and how to report them to protection teams.
It’s not just the red panda this will all protect! The Myanmar snub-nosed monkey, the takin (goat like animals), moon bears, the Bengal slow loris, the sun bear, the rufous-necked hornbill and the skywalker gibbon - they will all benefit from the removal of traps and the protection of species guardians.
Thank you to Jessica Weiller on Unsplash for the beautiful photo at the top of this blog.
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