Giant panda at Chengdu Panda Base, China

© Jim Zuckerman/Jaynes Gallery/DanitaDelimon

Happy Panda Day!. Panda Day

Giant pandas are loved the world over but nowhere more than in China, where they are considered national treasures. On March 16, we celebrate these distinctive bears, which live mainly in forests in the mountains of western China and subsist almost entirely on a diet of bamboo. These black-and-white giants start off small—a newborn panda is about the size of a stick of butter—but after eating their way through between 26 and 84 pounds of bamboo a day, male adults can weigh in at up to 300 pounds.

China's Chengdu Panda Base, pictured on our homepage, houses one of the world's largest populations of giant pandas bred in captivity. Their journey started with six rescued giant pandas in the 1980s, and the base is now home to about 150 of these beautiful animals. In the wild, panda numbers are rebounding after years of decline thanks to conservation efforts. The species has been upgraded from 'endangered' to 'vulnerable' but they still require our help—and events like Panda Day—to raise awareness of the need to protect these loveable giants.