Panda Bears and the Endangered Species Act Involving the Policy Sciences Framework Essay Example

foreign visitors travel to their reserves to interact with Pandas. Wolong is the reserve with the largest human population and has risen by 66 percent with over 115 percent households since it was founded in 1975.

Panda Bears depend entirely on the environment for food. Bamboo comprises of all of the panda’s diet, and their patterns of living focus on the sources of food (Owen, 2013). As the population of human increases, the demand for timber increases and this has significantly reduced the size of the suitable habitats. Pandas do not have common natural predators and have a long lifespan up to decades, but the rate of breeding is slow. Thus, human invasion of into demographics of Panda has had a great impact. Wild pandas and captive brethren function as posters for several movements concerned with the environment. Hence, these two types of pandas are beneficial as tourist attractions and as a result are frequently disturbed. Recently, the number of tourists that interact with Pandas has been increasing and is likely to increase in future. Human population continues to put more pressure on pandas and is likely to increase in future.

There is about a population of 20 pandas that are living in zoos outside the Chinese borders. They create a main tourist attraction in the U.S. particularly Washington D.C.zoo. One of the primary functions of the pandas is to raise awareness of environmental problems as well as sell novelties. When the pandas attain the age of 4 and five years, they enter sexual maturity which is an interesting topic to the zoo (Owen, 2013). Population growth of panda is troublingly slow and has further problems of

birth in captivity has caused the activity to become more significant. The time about 1-3 day which is an annual period of mating is monitored closely together with other things such as levels of estrogen and feeding habits. During the 2003 spring, the session of mating lasted only for 15 seconds which showed a glimmer of hope but turned out to be fruitless. As a result, the repopulation of panda bear is hindered, and this endangers the species.

When panda bear are not engaged in mating activities, most of their time is spent while eating (Tangley, 2006). Each of them spends over 10 hours every day to look for nutritious food. The diets that they take are more varied compared to that of other wild pandas although they depend heavily on bamboo. Thus, nutritious diet is necessary to ensure they remain healthy. Panda bear is fond of living on their own, but they interact with others occasionally when they come across them. However, they are likely to come across varied climatic and geographical features in the wild. Additionally, panda bear is subjected to a thorough scrutiny by researchers and tourists (Owen, 2013). Unfortunately, how they interact with these groups seems to be quite disturbing.

Geographically, the population of panda bear is relatively concentrated as it covers only three provinces in the western part of South China (Martin & Carle, 2013). The Chinese government has established nature reserves where a majority of the Panda bear lives. Most of the occupants around the habitats of panda are poor and depends heavily on farming and logging as a means of earning livelihood. Such activities contribute little in economic value, yet

they are detrimental to panda bear habitats. Fortunately, ecotourism is capable of supporting the local economy through value addition to the local environment. The general population is much interested in the preservation of its sources of income and may lead to improved economic situation. The statutory prohibitions have failed in eliminating the activities of encroachment as local people are more interested in fuelling economic growth rather than preserving the environment. As mentioned earlier, as the general public gains more interest in spurring economic growth, it results in the destruction of the panda bear habitat (Owen, 2013). Such activities have ongoing especially in China over the years, and this interferes with suitable conditions for survival of the bear.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) ought to protect endangered species to prevent extinction, but it has failed. Most of the countries have their description of the ESA. Over the years, species have undergone extinction. Biological evolution fuelled by change in the natural climate and geologic events have contributed to climate change (Martin & Carle, 2013). The Endangered Species Act has managed to recover fully only one percent of the rare species, and this includes panda bear. Nations have spent millions of dollars for these activities, but the recovery efforts have not been fully successful especially in difficult economic conditions. To assess the effectiveness of ESA on a grander scale one of the leading green group called Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) compared the rate of recovery for 100 species. The CBD revealed that the rate at which ESA recovers the species is slow than anticipated. One of the species under the recovery is panda bear. ESA has not done

much to improve the recovery of panda bear.

CBD also revealed that most of the species including panda bear had not enjoyed protection for a long time as specified in the ESA (Tangley, 2006). Over 80% of these species have not attained their anticipated recovery year. However, some of the species have recovered to some extent even though the recovery period is long. Under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, panda bear has been listed as among the endangered species. Some environmental groups have claimed that panda bear is at the risk of extinction due to anthropogenic activities. The groups filed a petition concerning listing of panda bear as threatened species under ESA. According to the group’s claims, listing panda bear under ESA is likely to cause negative effects on efforts for conserving bear. It can also be expensive to the economy of the U.S. and hence ESA is not effective in protecting panda bear.

Analysis of the policy problem

It is imperative to note that Panda bears are safeguarded by the (CITES) convention arranged an International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Thus any exportation or importation of the panda bears is under regulation. CITES came into existence in 1963 through the world conservation union which is an intergovernmental body that is linked to the United Nations structure via its Environment Programme. At the national level, panda bears are protected by the United States Endangered Species Act that is of importance in shaping the U.S, guidelines as and when required as outlined in this paper. The aspects of the intra-national movement of panda bears together with the ecotourism are considered to be matters of domestic.

Population, food production, pollution, industrialization and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources include some of the factors considered over time to determine and represent forest policies formulation. It is undertaken that environmental problems are multidimensional and interconnected in such a way that traditional policies can no more handle them. Poverty, degradation of the environment, uncontrolled urban spread, youth alienation, monetary and inflation and economic disruptions are common trouble that directly or indirectly influence the formulation of the effective policies.

The manifestation of these challenges holds technical, political, economic and social elements via interaction with each other. All in all, it depends on the predicament of the human nature and social perception of the problematic, in consideration of the skills and knowledge. It is argued that man does not have a clear understanding of the significance, origins, and interrelationships of the components. Henceforth the man is not in a position of developing an effective response. This is because man is considered to have the habit of sustained investigation of single items is problematic instead of comprehending the whole, the attentiveness is on the parts of the whole. The truth is that the whole is greater than the summation of all its parts. The main aim should therefore to bring new ideas, new analyses as well as new approaches to the inexorable human problems in line with the formulation and implementation of the effective forest policies (Miller-Rushing et al., 2016).

Altogether the aspect of the Food production cannot be ignored considering that increased by the growth of capital can be better enhanced via effective forest policies that take into consideration the aspect of food production. Hence to access more capital,

more resources are needed. It is undertaken that abandoned resources turn out to be pollution while the pollution holds up the growth of food and population. Given this, it is apparent that in an ultimate environment combined with unlimited resources, the growth of the panda bears’ population growth tends to be exponential as each of the reproduction cycles brings together bigger pools of components in the next reporting period. As expected, there are limiting factors that facilitate the growth to level off. As the population of the panda bears increases, the mentioned five factors that include Population, food production, pollution, industrialization, and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources turn out to be stronger while when the population is low, they become weak (Owen, 2013).

Taking a closer look, some of the key factors that influence the population growth of the panda bears to include diseases, predation, food scarcity and environmental factors. The increase of population in an environment, transmissible diseases becomes a key limiting factor. Thus it is necessary to have policies that advocate for less populated panda bears since less population does not transmit diseases faster as compared a dense population. Experts in this field, undertake that if population surpasses a certain level, exceedingly infectious and other viruses distresses a larger fraction of the inhabitants. It is as well recommended that provision of resources predominantly food is the key limiting factor population growth of the panda bears. This is in consideration that all ecosystems have a definite number of resources, only satisfying a certain level of population. However, Malnourishment and rivalry limit population growth beyond the set level. Every forest has a selection of predators curtailing

the growth of the population. Hence as species population exponentially rises, predators that until that time preyed upon the other species commence preying on the various species available as a means of survival.

Thus, check up on the preferred level of population versus the availability of resources in the forest ought to be the main objective of any given forest policy. This is because if overpopulation exists, then crowding of the environment may force the species to go outside their natural habitat to zones likely to be more vulnerable to endangered species. In all aspect, it is imperative to note that environment factors similar to climate extremes and pollutants inhibit the growth of the many species including the panda bears. Supposedly, having the population exponentially growing, then the assortment of the panda bears is expected to expand hence avoiding overcrowding. Normally expansion takes place mainly in areas heavily contaminated by humans or rather deforested hence leaving them predisposed to endangered species and disease. Thus the spreading out of the population besides other environmental factors in the forest may result to less suitable habitats instigating excesses of cold and hot weather, more toxic than in superlative territories (Miller-Rushing et al., 2016).

Recommendation

One of the greatest dangers to the panda bears is the degradation of the environment by human population mainly to the panda reserves and remnant wild panda bears. The destruction of the environment is as a result of the economic dependence on activities that are damaging as well heavily extractive which ought to be significantly reduced. Local population relies on the activities for economic survival. However, the economic values grasped diminishes before the likely revenues of well-

managed ecotourism programs, thus in case the ecotourism is to succeed, and then panda bears ought to be the case. In all aspect, strong management is needed not only to limit the tourist traffic but as well manage the capacity of the reserves in enhancing equitable distribution of the economic benefits hence securing support for the local environmental preservation.

In the time to come, if the wellbeing of the panda bears is to be determined by simple extrapolation of the current trends, then it is likely that species will be lost. Thus change is needed, and ecotourism epitomizes the unlimited possibility of safeguarding the panda bears environment. Ecotourism should be encouraged to protect panda bears and more to that controls measures should be reinforced to ensure that reserve management adopts a sustainable ecotourism program.

Conclusion and lessons learned

The main threat that panda bears are facing today is losing habitat. Bamboo is their primary diet, and human population has fragmented bamboo forests has become limited over the years. The low rate of reproduction also contributes to their status of endangered species. Human population has destroyed a large part of natural habitat for panda bear as a result of logging and settlement. In areas where forests of bamboo are always intact, cities or farmland separates each other, and this causes a problem as the bamboo dies off slowly. The Endangered Species Act has not been entirely successful in the protection of panda bear. As a result, the number of these species continues to decline over the years.

At the global level, the tourist is a giant industry that is very vulnerable to weak economic conditions, political and social conditions that

include terrorism and SARS scares. It is apparent that tourism is often targeted directly by trade barriers and tariffs through the perceptions of the possible destination matter immeasurably. From the above analysis, it is obvious that the world economic is mounting at a higher rate than its population. This is in consideration of the fact that the balance of birth rate and death rates has significantly changed due to the improvement of the advanced technological methods that results in increased survival of many young ones. This is attributed to the increasing usage of the industrial capital including machines and other various tools in reconsidering whether there is a need that can sustain world economic rate and population growth. First is the consideration of the physical demands, physiological and industrial activities that take into consideration of the ecological systems. Secondly are social requirement factors that include social life and technological process among others. All in all, legal issues regarding panda bears have not been contentious since all the concerned parties tend to agree that panda bears ought to be protected. Some of the likely challenges could implicate the Chinese domestic laws that influence the residents’ lifestyle in the panda bears regions. Nevertheless, these conflicts are not expected to make public to the world. What is important to note is that American and international regulations undertake that panda bears that are sent to U.S zoos serve by funding the Chinese efforts of conservations. In additional, the policies take into consideration of the study of issues that entail the aspect of maintaining steady balance mainly between conservation and development via ecotourism.

References

1. Martin, B., & Carle, E. (2013). Panda
   

Bear, Panda Bear, what do you see?. New York : Henry Holt and Company.