Vineyard expansion endangers panda habitats

Pinot vs Pandas Which is more important, Pandas or Pinot?  Researchers say that is a question conservationists and wine-growers will have to answer in the coming years as climate change sparks a hunt for cooler places to grow wine grapes, even if those places are home to sensitive animal populations.
Already, big players in the global wine industry are eyeing land in northern climates as rising temperatures force them to consider growing in places other than the most popular spots in the Mediterranean, Australia and California.
But an anticipated 25 to 73 percent loss in suitable growing area in the current major wine producing parts of the world by 2050 may put water resources and wildlife on a collision course with vineyards, researchers say.
The regions of Bordeaux and the Rhone Valley in France along with Tuscany in Italy are expected to experience big declines in suitable land area, said the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Meanwhile, much more land area to grow vineyards is anticipated to open up in western North America and northern Europe.
"When we started out, we thought this was science fiction and now we are pretty sure it is science fact," said Lee Hannah, lead author of the study that maps how wine-making regions around the world will change as temperatures heat up.
"Mediterranean Australia and Mediterranean Europe are the places that get hit the hardest," Hannah told AFP. "Those areas are experiencing a loss of about two-thirds of the area that is currently suitable for wine growing."
Faced with a loss of millions of acres, some growers are switching to different grape varieties, but by 2050 many places will be simply too hot and dry for any varieties, Hannah said.
Irrigation and micro-misters could be a last resort, but they are also a concern because "vineyards may be needing to tap freshwater resources in regions where there is often not enough freshwater to go around as it is right now," he said.
"Southern France will see a lot of declining suitability," Hannah said, estimating an 80 percent loss in land that is suitable for wine-growing there as growers move north, shifting the basis of the country's region-based wine industry.
Another big concern is how China will cope with the changes without harming pandas by infringing on their natural habitat, researchers said.
"Ironically, China, which is the world's fastest growing wine-producing region, happens to have all of its best wine suitability in panda habitat," Hannah said.
China's forest tenure reforms that hand over control of forests to local communities could be a danger to panda habitat if those localities choose to clear the way for agriculture, including wine-growing, he said.
While most European-style wine currently grown in China originates from a peninsula near Beijing, conservationists hope that China's government will take steps to protect panda habitat in the central mountains from wine-growers, Hannah said.