If you’re looking to conserve Pandas in the wild then it’s best if the forest you’re keeping them in has never been logged. I Zhang et al. writing in Biology Letters state “[I]t is no surprise that bamboo predicts panda habitat use. But it is surprising that old-growth forest should attain the same level of importance as bamboo.” The finding is the result of the scale of the study which covers 70% of panda habitat and not just a few reserves.
I got the story from the BBC website. Baffingly it doesn’t link to the source paper, Old-growth forest is what giant pandas really need, even though Biology Letters have given it Free Access.
Last year the BBC announced their policy of linking to scientific sources from stories on their website. It seems to have been mostly ignored.