June 21, 2002

Dispatch 4 – Wolong Nature Reserve, Sichuan Province, China

By Sue Nichols

WOLONG NATURE RESERVE, Sichuan Province, China – In a life of research, science is about delayed gratification, and success usually is down the road.

But in the tree- and bamboo-covered mountains of China, a group of scientists from both East and West got to look their successes in the eye.

And hug them.

Progress is being made on many fronts to restore the endangered giant panda to its native China. It’s a process that is as complex as its native country. It spans from better panda breeding and reduction of infant mortality to converting mountain farmland back to forest to understanding how to balance the tourism industry in the reserve with ecological needs.

Lose any piece of the puzzle and you likely will lose the panda.

Today we toured the upper mountain ranges of Wolong, getting a feel for the breadth of the reserve, as well as a look at some of the issues on which the Michigan State University/Chinese Academy of Science team spends its time collecting and analyzing data. In the afternoon, we toured the China Giant Panda Research Center in the reserve.

There, data sprang to life. We saw:

• Protection stations set up around the reserve to help keep the trees where they belong. There, the gated posts at which the trucks that roar through the reserve are stopped and inspected to be sure no one illegally hauls away timber. Commercial logging in the reserve was halted in 1975, but theft of wood for fuel or construction continues, as does poaching. With the vigilance of the government-run posts, the trees have a better chance of staying where they belong. Poaching is a serious offense in the reserve, and the Chinese mean business when it comes to the panda. Killing a panda could result in life in prison. Killing one and selling its skin could be punished by execution.

• The tourism that follows the pandas is like the groupies that follow a rock star. Much of Liu’s work centers on the impact of human activities, such as tourism, on the local economy and panda habitat. Our tour stops flitted from breathtaking mountain ranges sliced by roaring whitewater rivers to tourist traps. There, locals barbecue yak on a stick and tour buses deposit hundreds of visitors to snap up stuffed panda dolls and "traditional" woven handbags, complete with Velcro clasps. Liu dashed from site to site, snapping photos and comparing observations with his colleague, Zhiyun Ouyang of the Chinese Academy, noting at time, "This is new from last year, isn’t it?"

At the panda research center, the team, including Liu’s students Scott Bearer and Guangming He, watched the animal that consumes their thoughts and lives, but which they never see in the wild. Through research which blends hard science with painstaking field study, the center has achieved unprecedented success in panda breeding. (see related story)

The center’s director, Hemin Zhang, said that the baby panda survival rate has jumped from 30 percent to 95 percent. He takes us, with obvious pride, past baby pandas, pregnant pandas, male pandas pumped with breeding potential – 61 pandas in all, and more on the way.

It’s success born of understanding the panda’s home and life in the wild as well as their physiology. It also is success you can see and touch.

Jack Liu has spent seven years studying panda habitat. He never has seen one in the wild. As we scanned the wooded slopes of the breeding center’s expansive natural habitat areas, he cried out, "There’s one panda! Oh, there are two!"

Darned if I could see any at first. By the time I did he was already sprinting, like a kid for the ice cream truck, for a better look.

Giddy, we spent a half-hour photographing and admiring the pandas as they climbed trees, nuzzled each other and munched bamboo. We were all of 10 yards from them. As we left, I complimented Liu on his good eye for pandas. He grinned at me.

"If there is a panda for me in the wild," he said, "I will not miss it."