The red panda is endemic to the temperate forests of the Himalayas, and
ranges from the foothills of western Nepal to China in the east. Its
easternmost limit is the Qinling Mountains of the Shaanxi Province in
China. Its range includes southern Tibet, Sikkim andAssam in India,
Bhutan, the northern mountains of Burma, and in southwestern China, in the
Hengduan Mountains of Sichuan and the Gongshan Mountains in Yunnan. It may
also live in southwest Tibet and northern Arunachal Pradesh, but this has
not been documented. Locations with the highest density of red pandas
include an area in the Himalayas that has been proposed as having been a
refuge for a variety of endemic species in the Pleistocene. The
distribution range of the red panda should be considered disjunct, rather
than continuous. A disjunct population inhabits the Meghalaya Plateau of
northeastern India.