Efficacy and management challenges of the zoning designations of China ' s national parks

China is transforming its management of protected areas by establishing a national park system. To balance the needs of conservation and development, the national parks will adopt a zoning designation to delimit land in the parks for different purposes. These include a core zone that covers critical areas for conservation and allows few human uses, and a control zone that permits a wider range of development activities. However, the efficacy and management challenges of this zoning scheme are largely unknown. Using the Giant Panda National Park (GPNP) in Sichuan Province as an example, we evaluated the efficacy of the park's zoning designations by assessing the spatial distribution of critical habitat areas for panda conservation and human disturbance across different zones. Our results show that the core zone of the GPNP performs well in covering the majority of panda habitat (80%), highly suitable habitat (81%), and habitat patches that can support a viable panda population (80%). There is still space for improvement, however, because a significant portion (39%) of the potential corridors that require strict protections fall outside the core zone. Human disturbances are prevalent in the core zone of the park, representing a major challenge to achieving the management goal of eliminating human disturbances in the core zone. Our analyses and methods provide crucial information and tools to inform the design and management of the zoning designations of the GPNP and other PAs in China and beyond.