There are about 600 pandas left in the wild: more than half the bamboo forests where they live have disappeared in the last 30 years.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | UN alert on threat to wild bamboo

We hugged three-story-high dirt walls with vines clinging to them, passed dense bamboo forests, fragrant hibiscus bushes and groves of towering rainbow eucalyptus, a rare tree with multicolored bark.

WSJ: Driving the Hana Highway in Maui, Hawaii

About 25 km from Palomino, 30 minutes by bus, is the Quebrada Valencia park, where bamboo forests, enormous banyan trees and an impressive series of cascades provide shade from the oppressive heat.

BBC: Colombia��s virtually vacant paradise

We don't usually think of "Brokeback Mountain" director Ang Lee as an effects filmmaker, but he gave us the romantic swordplay above swaying bamboo forests in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and, less happily, "Hulk" bouncing across the desert like a rubber ball.

CNN: Review: 'Life of Pi' is bold and wondrous

Sheka, Ethiopia , covers a total area of 238, 750 ha and consists of forests, bamboo thickets, wetlands, agriculture lands, rural settlements and towns.

UNESCO: EDUCATION

But from planting the bamboo in the Zambian forests to shipping the bicycles to the concrete urban jungles across the world, the process of manufacturing the bikes is far from an easy task.

CNN: Made in Africa: Bamboo bikes put Zambian business on right track