Giant Panda

(Ailuropoda melanoleuca)

I have never seen a panda in the wild. Few people have, even those who have spent years studying them in the field. I have seen several of those loaned out by the Chinese government to various major zoos, including the first pair sent to the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, DC, in 1972. More recently, I visited those in the Beijing zoo, where somewhat to my surprise the male was lounging up in the fork of a tree. Of course, I now know that they frequently climb, especially the youngsters—I just had not thought of them up among the leaves. Which is hardly surprising as most zoos have only recently begun to supply climbing opportunities for their pandas.

The home of the giant panda is in South China, in temperate mixed-broadleaf forests east of the Tibetan plateau. Although there may now be as many as sixteen hundred in the wild, their future is far from certain. One of the problems, other than habitat loss, is their diet. They are bears—yet unlike other bears, they survive only on certain kinds of bamboo. Since bamboo is not nutritious, the giant pandas have to eat very large quantities of it. So it was especially worrying when, in 1978, there was a massive die-off of bamboo in panda habitat. It was unthinkable that the giant panda, a national symbol, should become extinct. So the Chinese government sent scientists into the field to find out what was going on.

First Studies in the Wild

Professor Hu Jinchu and his colleagues erected a hut in the Wolong Natural Reserve in the Qionglai Mountains. There they were joined three years later by my old friend Dr. George Schaller, who was to collaborate with the Chinese team in a field study sponsored by the WWF. Things were difficult in China back then; after four and a half years, George felt he could contribute nothing further and left the project. Thinking back to that time, he would later write: “I was filled with creeping despair, as the panda seemed increasingly shadowed by fear of extinction.”

Indeed, between 1975 and 1989 half of the habitat of the giant panda in Sichuan Province was lost due to logging and agriculture; the remaining forest was fragmented by roads and other developments. Among other things, this affects the regeneration of the bamboo, since it grows best under a forest canopy. The giant panda population became dispersed in small groups living in isolation. And that, as George wrote, is “a blueprint for extinction.” The pandas were also being illegally killed by poachers.

Pan Wenshi also began working with giant pandas in the 1970s, starting his own research in the Qinling Mountains. His formal studies had been interrupted by the Cultural Revolution so that he did not start off with the academic credentials of some of the other panda researchers. Nevertheless, his project continued for thirteen years during which he and his all-Chinese team radio-collared and tracked twenty-one pandas, gaining valuable information on all aspects of their behavior.

Devra Kleiman, whose work with the golden lion tamarin is detailed in part 2, has been involved in giant panda conservation work since her first visit to China in 1978, and she got to know Pan Wenshi quite well. During one of her visits, in November 1992, Pan promised that—in honor of her fiftieth birthday—she would see her first wild panda. She set off with some of his team for a cave where a female and her cub had been denned up—but when they got there, the pandas were gone. Pan was crestfallen. Suddenly panda calls sounded across the valley, “and not only did I get to see one wild panda, but there were three—one up a tree and two on the ground,” said Devra. “It was an incredibly unusual sighting, since researchers almost never saw pandas together outside the spring breeding season, especially not in November. Pan was as thrilled as I was!”

Another biologist who joined the team in the Wolong Natural Reserve in the mid-1990s was Dr. Matthew Durnin, who is now on the board of JGI-China. He told me that he only saw a giant panda in the wild once in his ten years of trudging up and down the steep densely forested slopes looking out for the telltale sign that would indicate where pandas had been—the remains of a bamboo meal and panda poop.

From time to time, students joined the team to pick up a few months of field experience. Because the research area was large, the team divided, searching in different areas and sharing information at the end of the day. “One evening,” said Matt, “I returned from another panda-less day and realized, at once, that something was up—one of the students, who had only been with the project two months, not only saw a giant panda up close, but photographed it as well!” Apparently he and the Chinese researcher had come upon it when it was asleep, and on waking it had seemed groggy. They had watched for five to six minutes before it woke up fully and hurried away. The only panda Matt saw was glimpsed briefly as it moved along a distant ridge.

During his time at Wolong, Matt got to know many of the staff who were employed locally. “I learned so much from them,” he told me. “They got paid very little, but they were so energetic, and seemingly enthusiastic, that you would think they chose the work—though, in fact, there were few opportunities for employment and they probably had little choice.”

The caretaker Wee Pung was from a minority group, and had been working at Wolong for almost fifteen years. He seemed really proud of the reserve, and of his role as caretaker. “All that time,” said Matt, “this man was keeping watch over the place, living in the woods.” And even though he may have taken that work from necessity, one day Wee Pung told Matt that not once since he’d joined the project had he been able to visit his family—he just could not afford the trip. Matt assumed his family was far away on the other side of the country. In fact, he told me, “it was just a two-hour drive away.” And so, of course, Matt drove him there.

Captive Breeding

The Chinese have put a lot of effort and money into captive breeding programs, but for years they had little success. Many Western scientists were invited to the Wolong breeding center to work along with the Chinese scientists for short periods—and Devra went for several months in 1982. In those days, the location was difficult to get to. They had to walk for about an hour, uphill, from the main road. And, said Devra, “They had to transport pandas by hand—two workers per panda—up the steep and slippery path, passing through two long tunnels that had been blasted out of the mountainside.”

One of the problems with the captive breeding at that time, Devra told me, was a lack of understanding of panda behavior that led to inappropriate husbandry. The pandas were caged separately and had no opportunity for socializing. Even during the breeding season, males and females were seldom introduced to each other for fear of aggression. Artificial insemination was the preferred method of inducing pregnancy, and in fact there were few males capable of mating with females naturally. That was partly, Devra believes, because they had no opportunity to climb, and their legs and hindquarters were often not well developed. Sometimes the female had trouble supporting the male during copulation, and he had trouble maintaining his mounting position.

Matt Durnin at work at China’s Wolong Nature Reserve, checking a seven-month-old panda. (Matt Durnin)

Then, in the mid- to late 1990s, the San Diego and Atlanta zoological societies, responding to requests from China, sent their scientists over to work with Chinese colleagues at Wolong. My good friend Don Lindburg, his postdoctoral student Ron Swaisgood, and Rebecca Snyder from Atlanta did a great deal of successful work there. At the same time Chinese zoos, especially the Wolong and Chengdu zoos, were also working to breed pandas.

Success

Finally, starting in 2000, births began to outnumber deaths, and from 2005 there were significant increases in the captive population. “This,” said Devra, “was a direct result of a change of attitude toward managing the pandas. All the recent significant increases in the captive population numbers have come about because of better captive conditions and an increase in natural matings.” Another factor was an innovative way of helping a mother panda to raise both babies when she has twins, first developed at the Chengdu Zoo Captive Breeding Center. Before this, a mother usually abandoned one of her two babies—which is not surprising, for raising two panda cubs is a lot of work. Like kittens, panda cubs cannot urinate or defecate without stimulation for several weeks—okay with one baby, extremely difficult with two. Now, however, a human caretaker gives the mother a helping hand: The twins are rotated, and while the mother cares for one the human surrogate takes over the other. As a result of all this, in 2008 there was a 95 percent survival rate in infants born at Wolong, compared with 50 percent twenty years before.

First Months of a Giant Panda Cub

Recently I had dinner with my old friend Harry Schwammer, director of Zoo Vienna, which is also involved in the giant panda captive breeding program. He told me that they recently experienced their first panda birth. Head keeper Eveline Dungl told me how the mother, Yang Yang, had built a branch-lined den in her outside enclosure, but subsequently moved inside to the specially prepared nesting box. Two mornings later, Eveline heard squeaks “that definitely did not come from Yang Yang.”

Yang Yang was an excellent mother, and not until the baby Fu Long was two and a half months old did she leave the den for a few hours at a time to feed outside. “Now, at the age of almost one year,” Eveline wrote to me, “Fu Long is already quite self-confident in exploring his surroundings. Even though he still mainly drinks breast milk, he is very interested in bamboo. And he also likes to try leaves or branches of other plants. There is no tree in the enclosure that he has not already climbed, no platform he hasn’t napped on.”

Harry Schwammer and his staff are engaged in discussions with Chinese scientists about the program to reintroduce giant pandas to the wild. Harry and others believe that it will be important to rear cubs with minimum contact with their human caretakers. But as we shall see, there are many other challenges.

Problems with Reintroduction to the Wild

The idea of reintroduction to the wild in China was vetoed in 1991, and again in 1997 and 2000, on the grounds that there was insufficient knowledge, especially with regard to the status of wild pandas and their habitat. It was also felt that there were insufficient funds for such a long-term project. Finally, none of the current regimes of captive breeding could provide suitable candidates. However, in 2006 Xiang Xiang, a young male born at the Wolong breeding center, was released into the Wolong Natural Reserve. In the documentary film I saw, he appeared to be doing all right. His keeper showed him how to choose good bamboo, and readings from his radio collar showed that he sometimes made journeys of more than five miles—after which he always returned to the release site. However, this seemingly good start ended in tragedy when he was apparently attacked and wounded by the original panda residents. And although he recovered from those injuries, he was attacked again and died of his wounds.

Tourism and Awareness

Today many Chinese schools teach their pupils about giant panda behavior and conservation, especially in Chengdu in Sichuan Province, where local pride in the panda is strong. And indeed, the giant panda has put Chengdu on the tourist map. It’s the gateway city for visiting the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve Centre, which gives talks and shows films to visitors, and allows them to play with small panda cubs. What a shock for the group of American tourists that were enjoying this experience when the terrible 2008 earthquake devastated the mountains of Sichuan Province. A New York Times article found the group full of praise for the “kindness and heroism” of the panda keepers, who helped them reach the road. “Those keepers were risking their lives,” said one visitor. “There was nothing safe about any of it.” And once all the visitors were secure, the keepers hurried back and rescued all thirteen baby pandas, carrying them tucked under their arms as they negotiated the dangerous rock-strewn route. During the quake, most of the enclosures were destroyed; one panda was killed, two were injured, and six escaped (four of which were later captured).

Of course there was immediate concern and anguish for the thousands of people who were affected, particularly the children who perished in the cheaply constructed schools. (All ten schools with JGI Roots & Shoots groups were affected. Most of the teachers and students lost their homes, and many lost family members. Their school buildings are mostly either collapsed or unusable. One young boy was killed.)

There was also national and international concern for the wild pandas, most of whom are living in the forty-four nature reserves in the Sichuan mountains. Dr. Lu Zhi, a leading panda expert and China country director for Conservation International, said researchers were trying to find out how the wild pandas had been affected, even as they were helping with the human tragedy.

“The Panda’s Day Is Now”

During the 1990s, there was a change in China’s conservation policy when, as a result of massive flooding in the Yangtze River Basin, the government imposed a ban on commercial logging and launched a vast reforestation effort on the steep hillsides—where clear-cutting had removed the cover necessary for protection of the watersheds. Luckily for the giant panda, much of that area fell within its range. For the Chinese, the giant panda is a national treasure, and suddenly it seemed possible to set aside new reserves for them. Most recently, in 2006, the government expressed even stronger support for the protection of the panda’s habitat when the provincial governments of Sichuan and Gansu agreed to expand and connect scattered nature reserves in the Minshan mountain range, home to about half of the approximately 1,590 wild giant pandas believed to live there.

Over the years, conferences to discuss panda conservation have been held in Berlin (1984), Tokyo (1986), Hangzhou, China (1988), and Washington, DC (1991). In 2000, the San Diego Zoological Society brought together scientists from China, Europe, and North America to discuss current understanding of the giant panda. Known as Panda 2000, this conference created new collaborations and new friendships and provided a great deal of new information, which is presented in a major volume, Giant Panda: Biology and Conservation. In his foreword, Don Lindburg wrote: “Perhaps the clearest consensus drawn from this event was that the panda’s day is now.”

And George Schaller, so pessimistic when he left China in the 1980s, wrote in his introduction to the book: “The prospects for saving the giant panda are today unequaled.”

The pygmy hog population was once down to only a few survivors dwelling in Manas National Park in India. Many dedicated individuals helped to restore this unique and highly intelligent animal through captive breeding. (Goutam Narayan)