June 17, 2002

Dispatch 1 – Beijing

by Sue Nichols

BEIJING -- Preserving the habitat of China’s beloved, and endangered, giant panda is as complicated as the panda is endearing.

Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University and Zhiyun Ouyang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have spent the last seven years juggling the complexities of human needs, wildlife necessities, political realities and technological potential.

You’d figure that would be enough to keep two old college buddies busy.

But this week in Beijing, Liu and Ouyang are talking not only about their project at the Wolong Nature Reserve, but also what else they can take on.

Today pandas in China, tomorrow black bear in Texas, or maybe birds in Inner Mongolia

"What we’ve been doing in Wolong is a starting point so we can apply the methodology and ideas to other areas," Liu said. "Eventually we want to scale up from one place to a regional scale. A national scale. An international scale."

Their approach to understanding the nuances of prime panda habitat, and how humans have an impact, is unique.

"We integrate ecology with socioeconomics and human demographics and behavior," Liu said.

Wolong is a logical training ground. The 2,000-square-kilometer reserve is home to both wildlife and people. Their research has shown that only half of the reserve is panda friendly. Of that, a quarter is occupied and affected by humans.

Forest-chopping, wood-gathering, road-building humans seeking to support families competing for the same bamboo forests as the pandas.

Ouyang, director of the Key Lab of Systems Ecology in the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences here, is one of those who is spearheading China’s commitment to protecting its environment. Since the center was established in 1975, the number of nature reserves in China has grown from 34 to 1,551.

"We’ve learned how to set up reserves," Ouyang said. "Now we have to explore how to manage the reserves better.

The pair credits their long friendship with the synergy that often enables one to finish the other’s sentences. The similarities in MSU’s strengths in land use, sustainability and environmental sciences to China’s research strengths also have made the new methods become reality.

This year, Liu’s students already are six weeks into their work in Wolong, interviewing villagers in the reserve, measuring bamboo growth in the forests, and working on computer models.

Liu is on his way there. But first in Beijing he spends days showing how this work can be translated across reserves worldwide.

Tuesday, he will travel some three hours by plane, then six hours by car to a remote nature reserve that shares borders with China, Russia and Mongolia to see if the issues in the wetlands there might benefit from their work.

Then he and Ouyang will visit the pandas.