Two decades into the effort to save giant pandas in China from extinction, the greatest remaining threat to pandas may be poor farmers. Chinese authorities estimate that only about 1,000 pandas continue to live in the wild after logging and poaching decimated the animal’s ranks. In recent years, the country has introduced stiff fines to reduce poaching, instituted a ban on commercial logging in panda habitat, and established reserves encompassing half of the panda’s habitat. But poor farmers, often ethnic minorities, continue to live in and nearby these reserves, where they are technically not allowed, cutting down trees for firewood and timber. The government says it can’t stop the tree cutting because many of the farmers don’t want to move and there is little arable land elsewhere in the country for them. Zhou Li, one ethnic Tibetan farmer, said, “People care about pandas more than they care about us. They don’t care if we get sick. But if a panda gets sick, everybody runs to help it.”
