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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.