Species profile
Ailurus fulgens
Red panda
EN · Endangered — Endangered — very high risk of extinction in the wild
About this species
Red panda (Ailurus fulgens) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Endangered. The red panda is the sole living member of its own family, Ailuridae — more closely related to weasels and skunks than to the giant panda. Its recorded population direction is decreasing, so the category needs to be read alongside continuing losses of individuals or local populations.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with terrestrial, forest, mountain. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. The word panda may come from the Nepali ponya, and the red panda was named panda about 50 years before the giant panda — which borrowed the name. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
Red pandas wrap their ringed tails around themselves like blankets in the cold, and use them as balancing poles while crossing treetops. The catalogue records 3 principal pressures for this profile: Deforestation, Poaching, Fragmentation. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Protecting and reconnecting habitat is a priority, together with infrastructure planning that keeps feeding, breeding or migration routes functional. Direct protection needs to combine enforcement with conflict prevention, demand reduction and local benefits that make coexistence viable. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
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