Around five percent of wild pandas face bamboo loss

Nearly 20 per cent of the world's wild giant pandas are at risk due to climate change, which researchers say will affect bamboo growth in an area of China.

Between 80 and 100 per cent of liveable panda habitat is expected to disappear from China's Qinling Mountains by the end of the 21st century, which is home to almost five per cent of the world's wild giant pandas.

Jack Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University, said: "Ninety-nine per cent of food that pandas eat in the wild is bamboo. If there's no bamboo, then pandas can't survive."

There is currently fewer than 1,600 giant pandas left in the wild, making them one of the most endangered species in the world.

Liu, who has been studying pandas in their habitats for 17 years, added that most conservation research has focused on human impacts. However, to find out what influence climate change might have, he and his colleagues went to the the Qinling Mountains area.

There, the researchers used a wide range of climate models to predict the likely affect on bamboo plants, which are highly sensitive to temperature change. They found that there would be a loss of food under every scenario, spelling big trouble for pandas unless active measures are taken at once.

The findings have been published in the Nature Climate Change journal.