Climate change is expected to slash in half the giant panda's global suitable habitat over the next 55 years - and that's based on the most conservative of scenarios.

Giant pandas already have a difficult time with survival with their picky eating habits and notoriously low sex drives. In fact, the giant panda's natural inclination to adapt and survive is so weak that their very existence today is a veritable thumbing of the nose at Darwin.

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Taking these attributes into account,  Ming Xu, associate professor of ecological modeling at Rutgers University, created a model to see how the suitable habitat for the panda could be affected by adding climate change to the equation.

Xu and his team found that if there is just a 1 degree Celsius rise in global warming by 2100, the wild Panda habitat will be halved by 2070.

They also found that in addition to reducing the natural habitat, climate change could isolate small groups of Pandas, which would lead to a decrease in their population. According to New Scientist magazine, this would mean that groups such as the 29 animals that live in the Daxiang mountains of southwest China, could become cut off from the rest of the population and risk dying out.

Pandas live mainly bamboo forests high in the mountains of western China, according to the World Wide Fund, and are mainly distributed between the Qinling and Minshan Mountains. They were once widespread throughout southern and eastern China, as well as Myanmar and northern Vietnam.

However, because of human population expansion in China, pandas are now restricted to only about 20 isolated patches of mountain forest in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.

Despite the gloomy outlook, there was some positive news coming from the research. Xu believes that some areas to the north of the pandas' current mountainous homelands could become a suitable Panda habitiat. This would require planting bamboo there now so that it will be mature and ready for consumption by the time the pandas relocate.

To counter the effects of climate change on the panda habitat, the researchers said it is increasingly necessary to transplant small populations of pandas from the southwestern to the northwestern part of their current range to ensure population viability.

"Conservation strategies must anticipate how climate change may alter the geographic distributions of limited food resources for highly specialized species," said the report. "Our results suggest the need for immediate change in current conservation policies, and formulating adaptation plans for giant panda conservation in a changing climate."

TagsPanda Habitat to be Halved by 2070, Climate change may halve giant panda's habitat by 2070, Ming Xu, giant pandas, global warming