Hungry livestock gobble panda food

Livestock grazing poses one of the greatest dangers to giant pandas, having damaged more than one-third of the rare animals' habitat in a model nature reserve, a study by Chinese and US scientists has found.

A four-year investigation led by Li Binbin, assistant professor at Duke Kunshan University's Environmental Research Center, found that an increasing number of free-ranging livestock, mostly cattle and horses, inside the Wanglang National Nature Preserve has consumed most of the bamboo in some areas.

"Bamboo constitutes 99 percent of the giant pandas' diet," Li said. "The pandas have no choice but to move to higher areas of the mountains where bamboo can still be found."