To the Editor:

Hello! My name is Hayden Wink, I am a seventh-grader at Hollis Brookline Middle School. I am sending this email so you can put it into your great newspaper to help spread awareness about the poaching of red pandas.

These adorable animals are vulnerable and soon to be endangered, and I want to let people know about this dire situation. Killing and capturing red pandas should be stopped.

Red pandas are in danger of becoming extinct. Only around 10,000 red pandas are still alive. During breeding season, red pandas on average only have two offspring ("About the Red Panda"). This means that they cannot keep their numbers up while they are threatened. Many of these threats are poaching, human threats, forest degradation and habitat loss ("Red Panda"). With all these threats and low birth rates, the red panda race will soon begin to plummet even more than it is now.

As stated before, dangers to the forest are related to the red pandas becoming extinct. The Red Panda Network believes that, "Protecting the Red Panda goes hand in hand with protecting the forest" ("About The Red Panda"). Sadly, the forest is being destroyed along with the pandas. Red pandas are the only living members of the Ailuridae family ("Red Panda"), and these animals are very rare, yet we are destroying their homes and lives.

Red pandas have some issues with where they are, and they do have some things actually helping them. The Smithsonian National Zoological Park writes, "Part of the difficulty in conserving red pandas relates to their unique habitat" ("Red Panda"). Tragically, humans rely on the red panda’s habitat to survive, but destroy it in the process ("About the Red Panda"). Some good measures are being taken to help the red panda population grow. Eighty zoos in the world possess red pandas ("About The Red Panda"), so hopefully with these efforts the population of red pandas will finally spring back.

I would really like it if you could put this email in the news so people could learn about this situation. What some people are doing is wrong and we should let people know that these things are happening today.

Hayden Wink
Brookline