June 20, 2002

Dispatch 3 – Wolong Nature Reserve, Sichuan Province, China

By Sue Nichols

WOLONG NATURE RESERVE, Sichuan Province, China – The term "panda habitat" sounds so clinical.

We’ve been talking about habitat for a week – about preserving it, measuring it, balancing it.

In fact, "habitat" does not begin to describe the reality of Wolong. The reserve cannot be described in one word. The drive into the home of the giant panda is a drive into a tangled, beautiful jumble of noise and smells and visual overload.

It is beautiful in ways that no scientists will measure. But, driving up the twisting mountain road through slopes that tower up to 90 degrees, one can understand that it likely will take science to untangle some of its secrets.

We left for Beijing airport at 6 a.m., having rolled in from Inner Mongolia at 1:30 a.m. to repack and wash off two days of road grime. By 11 a.m. we were in Chengdu, being welcomed by Liu’ doctoral students, Scott Bearer and Guangming He. They were taking a couple days’ R & R in the city – Bearer having just spent 10 days on the mountain gathering global positioning data and cataloging panda poop.

Wolong is about a three-hour drive from the airport, through two bustling cities and into the steep forested mountains that shelter the pandas and the bamboo on which they live.

It’s a drive of contrasts – not just from bend to bend, but from meter to meter. We hurtle up the winding slopes. On one side are steep cliffs plunging to the roaring Pitiao River. The river doesn’t meander like most American bodies of water. This one roars, as if its life purpose is to pummel the enormous boulders that have chosen to get in its way. Its muddy color comes from the acres of soil that wash down from the mountain.

On the other side is rock. Or tightly wedged villages, or cabbage plots with a line of corn insinuating itself between rows. Or a cement factory, or a string of open-air shops, or Tibetan children walking home from school – all but in the path of the speeding cars. Or laborers with hoes and shovels thrown over their shoulders. Or the bounty of a coal mine, dumped down the mountain to where it can be reached. Or a small grave plot marked with carved stone.

We get to the reserve, which lies cupped in steep mountains. Hotels, a few simple market stalls, a sprawling panda breeding center, a brand new panda museum and knots of low, simple homes blend their sounds and smells with the reserve’s chorus of mist, birdcalls and foliage.

It has been nearly a year since Liu has been here. For days he has met with friends and colleagues, talking about habitat at banquet tables, in meeting rooms and in bouncing shuttle vans.

Finally, habitat stops being conceptual. We are here.

It’s time to get to work.