The Response Of Captive-bred Giant Pandas To The Natural Environment After Release

Translocation is a complicated ecological protection project.Whether translocated individuals can adapt to the translocation regional environment is one of the keys to success or failure of translocation.Captive-bred animals are more likely to fail in viability and environmental adaptability in the wild than wild-born individuals in the translocation project.The research on the translocated individual’s response to the new environment after translocation is helpful to understanding the adaptation process of them to wild environment.Then,it will be adjusting and optimizing the future translocation work and protection and management strategies through analyzing and summarizing the experience and lessons of the translocation.In this paper,the five captive-bred giant pandas translocated in Liziping National Nature Reserve are taken as the research objects.By using GPS collar monitoring data,we studied the response of translocated giant pandas to natural environment from activity characteristics and habitat utilization.We compared the differences in the distance of daily movement,daily activity rate,and daily intensity of activity of translocated individuals under different weather conditions.We examined whether there are changes of the quality of habitats used by translocated individuals with time in the post-release.The intraspecific relationship with the local wild giant pandas is investigated,and the loyalty of the translocated giant pandas is evaluated.The behavioral adaptation process of giant pandas to the environment after release is analyzed.The successful experience and existing problems of the current translocation mode are discussed in order to provide reference for improving the translocation measure and increasing its success rate,and the results could also be helpful to the release project of other large mammals.The main research results are summarized as follows:1.The translocated individuals were active on sunny and partly cloudy days,moving long distances and exhibiting high activity rate with intense activity;prolonged rainfall(light rain,moderate-to-heavy rain)led to reduced activities of the translocated individuals.Their overall activity levels on overcast days were lower than sunny days but higher than those on the days with prolonged rain.Short-term rainfall(rain showers)had little impact on the activity rate or intensity with the daily activity similar to that on sunny and partly cloudy days.In conclusion,weather conditions had a significant impact on the activities of the translocated giant pandas.Moreover,although the giant pandas were carnivorous,the activity patterns of translocated individuals under different weather conditions were similar to those of omnivores.2.The results showed that the quality of habitat used by the translocated giant pandas was significantly higher than the average habitat quality of the research region,and was significantly lower than that used by resident giant pandas.This suggested that the released three giant pandas have a certain habitat selection ability.3.The three translocated giant pandas gradually moved away from their release sites and did not exhibit site fidelity.In the first six months,the giant pandas stayed within about 3 km of their release sites,where habitat was good quality but overlapped with the distribution of resident giant pandas.The overlap of location between released and resident giant pandas decreased after six months when the released giant pandas moved away from their release sites.This indicates that the lack of loyalty to the release site in the three released giant pandas in this study is mainly due to competition.4.In the future practice we recommend that giant pandas should be translocated in sunny(cloudy)periods and avoid long-term rainy days as much as possible,and alternating translocation in multiple release sites which with higher quality of surrounding habitats.