Flora and Fauna

Red Panda

Red Pandas are small arboreal mammals that live across the Himalayan ranges; from India, Bhutan and Nepal to Tibet, Myanmar, and China. Red pandas are slightly larger than house cats and diverged from other species of bears over 40 million years ago. Despite only distant relations, the red panda shares a bamboo diet and an attitude of laziness with the Chinese Great Panda. There are anywhere from 11,000 to 20,000 red pandas left worldwide. Their cold mountain habitats make them intolerant of temperatures above 20C and they live between 2,200 meters and 4,800 meters in dense forests with old trees and bamboo. A few red pandas are to be found in the Langtang valley and the forest which stretches up to Chyolangpati.

Diet & behaviour

Red Pandas have a bamboo-based diet but also eat berries, mushrooms, acorns, eggs, insects, and other smaller mammals. They are known to be mostly active at dusk and dawn and sedentary during the day. Because of their low calorie diets, Red Pandas do little more than sleep and eat. Red Pandas have snow leopards and martens as predators and will retreat up trees if they feel threatened. If left with nowhere to hide or run they will stand on both their legs and place their arms in the air in an attempt to scare off predators.

Cultural depictions

Red Panda furs are used in China to make hats and used in wedding ceremonies as good luck charms for brides. Despite its presence in Nepal, there is little to no cultural folklore surrounding the red panda. It is rumoured that Indira Gandhi kept red pandas as pets when she was a child, and that the Mozilla browser was possibly named after the Chinese name for the Red Panda: 火狐 “fire fox.”

Threats

Red Pandas are classified as a threatened species by the IUCN. Their numbers diminish due to poaching, deforestation and competition with domestic animals. In China, it is common to use red panda fur in ceremonies and rituals and the deforestation of older forests in the Nepali Himalayas has diminished red panda populations. There are several national parks and breeding programs that are trying to restore red panda numbers, and several zoos have already begun releasing red pandas back into the wild.