12 Mammals Back From The Brink

12 Mammals Back From The Brink — page 1 — GIANT PANDAS RELEASED INTO BAMBOO FORESTS Giant pandas don't start out giant They weigh the same as a stick of butter at birth Panda cubs fur is They use their powerful jaws and sharp teeth to crush the shoots and leaves But when bamboo trees became harder to find so did the pandas snowy white After several weeks they start growing patches of black fur Adult giant pandas spend 12 hours a day eating On Giant pandas used to live all across southern the menu is bamboo and eastern Pandas are great climbers Sometimes they even sleep in

12 Mammals Back From The Brink — page 2 — IUCN RED LIST The International Union for the Conservation of Nature IUCN keeps a list of all threatened species in the world called the Red List Each species is labeled according to how at risk it is Least Concern Not considered at risk Near Threatened At risk of being vulnerable or endangered in the future Vulnerable At risk of extinction Endangered At high risk of extinction Critically Endangered At extremely high risk of extinction Extinct in the Wild Only lives in captivity Extinct No members of a species are left China They searched forests for bamboo to plant crops The pandas bamboo They found it on high had less food to eat Hunters also slopes in summer They found it in killed many pandas By the 1970s the valleys in winter But China's approximately 1 000 pandas were population was growing As more left in the wild and more people lived in the country China set aside land for the pandas they developed land where pandas starting in the 1960s It created had lived Farmers plowed down the strips of land known as bamboo trails Giant pandas can follow them to the mountains China also started a captive breeding program 300 Weight in pounds 136 kg of an adult giant panda Some baby pandas born in zoos are released into the wild as adults The Status Endangered Population Approximately 2 000 Home China Life Span 14 20 years government has also cracked down on illegal hunting An estimated 2 000 giant pandas live in the mountains of China and another 200 live in

12 Mammals Back From The Brink — page 3 — UTAH PRAIRIE DOGS GET BACK TO DIGGING in communities of thousands or even millions When more people settled the western United States in the 1800s Prairie dogs belong to the squirrel family of rodents but they get their name from their loud bark They make this sound as a warning when they spot a danger Prairie dogs live on grassy plains in burrows they dig using their sharp claws These underground homes have many rooms with separate areas for sleeping food storage and 1900s they did not want to live alongside prairie dogs The prairie dogs tunnels ruined land for crops and the uneven ground over the burrows was dangerous for livestock Prairie dogs also ate grasses or waste Prairie dogs once lived Utah prairie dogs eat grasses flowers seeds and sometimes insects AP

12 Mammals Back From The Brink — page 4 — 12 Length in inches 30 cm of an adult prairie dog It A Status Endangered Population Approximately 9 200 adults Home Utah Life Span 3 4 years A relative of the squirrel prairie dogs only live in North America that cows grazed on Farmers and ranchers shot or poisoned thousands of prairie dogs in the early 1900s The number of Utah prairie dogs fell from approximately 100 000 to approximately 3 500 by PRAIRIE DOG TOWNS Prairie dogs live in big groups called towns Usually a town covers less than the 1970s half of one square mile 1 3 sq km But one prairie dog town in Texas in the early 1900s filled 25 000 square miles 65 000 sq km That's about the size of Utah prairie dogs were added to the Endangered Species List in 1973 People thought this prairie dog would be extinct by 2000 Lands were set aside in places such as Bryce Canyon National Park There prairie dog burrows would not be disturbed Elsewhere it was illegal the state of West Virginia Approximately 400 million prairie dogs used to live in this town before the land to kill the prairie dogs With these protections they tripled was developed in number

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