This is Rosie the Red Panda. She was the result of our Saturday morning activity yesterday. I asked my daughter why these pandas - which are just slightly larger than a domestic cat - are endangered, and she told me that me people are cutting down their trees in Asia (the Himalayas, China & Nepal) where they live. This made me feel so proud. 'If we take their trees away, they'll have to sleep on the ground, and they'll get cold down there,' she tells me. That doesn't sound very nice, does it?
Red pandas are not only endangered due to deforestation - logging and the spread of agriculture - climate change is having a big impact (https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/red-pandas-climate-change-and-the-fight-to-save-forests).
The red panda's habitat is within a very narrow temperature range (https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/red-pandas-climate-change-and-the-fight-to-save-forests). Temperatures in the forests of Asia are rising which means that red pandas would need to move up the mountains to higher elevations in order to adapt to the changing climate, providing there are still trees in those areas, of course (https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/red-pandas-climate-change-and-the-fight-to-save-forests).
I drew Rosie on a rock, and my daughter coloured her in, drew a forest with flowers and sketched a self-portrait with pens, pencils and oil pastels.
