The giant panda lives today on the eastern rim of the mountainous Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in Southwestern China, specifically in the areas of the Minshan and Qinling Mountains (the provinces of Gansu-Sichuan and Shaanxi, respectively). There, giant pandas enjoy the cool, moist climate they prefer, since perennially dense (thick as clouds) mists are interrupted only by the occasional torrential rain in summer, while winters are snowy, with the occasional hailstorm.
Unfortunately, neither of these two mountainous areas forms a single, contiguous panda habitat. Instead it is broken up into small patches, with human-related patches in between them. A phenomenon referred to by panda experts as "habitat fragmentation".