Rain, Pandas and more Pandas

Thursday evening it began raining which began a long thunder storm. I have never heard thunder so loud in my life, during the night the storm was directly above us because the thunder and lighting occured at the same time. The rain persisted through most of Friday so our work day was not the usual. They don't like to make the pandas go outside while it is raining, so we only fed them and didn't clean any of the enclosures.

Today it was not raining and there was a lot of panda poop and old bamboo to clean up. Appearantly when it rains here they turn off the water because the sewage overflows with rain water, so hopefully that will start up again soon! This afternoon we will have a lecture on Pheasants. Tomorrow is our last day of volunteering, so I will make the most of my panda poo scooping experience.

Panda Fact of the Post:
-One of the GP's named Yang guang (Sunny) that I work with will be going to the 2012 Olympics in England!

Hue Mei (Beautiful Flower)

Today my group switched volunteer locations with the other half of our wildlands group. At this location there are 14 pandas, one is a pregnant female and there are four other females with babies. One of the females with a baby is Hua Mei, she was the first panda born in North America at the San Diego Zoo in 1999 and was sent back to China in 2004. Ot is quite an honor to work with her!

Overall there have been a lot of really awesome insects with vibrant colors, large butterflies that look like falling leaves and even a preying mantis!

This afternoon we will get a tour of the veterinary facility, I am very excited to see this more private area of the center!

Panda Fact of the Post:
-A Giant Panda tooth is seven times the size of a human tooth.

Bifengxia Panda Conservation Center

Arrived at the Bifenxia Panda Conservation Center on Saturday July 23rd in the afternoon and settled into the Panda Inn before our vunteer orientation. We received our work uniforms, a big grey jump suit, gloves and volunteer badges. The showed us the areas we would be working in and broke is up into two groups. After all official matters were complete we wandered around the center taking photos of adult, subadult, and baby Pandas! The center has a moderately sized portion that visitors can see, essentially like a zoo that only has Giant Pandas.

Sunday July 24th, first day of work!
Volunteer schedule:
8:10-9:15 Clean four different enclosures including removal of old bamboo, scooping feces and placing fresh baboo in the outdoor portion of each pen.

10:30-10:40 Feed two pandas panda cake and carrots.

11:30-11:40 Feed two pandas panda cake and apples.

1:40-2:00 Feed panda cake, carrots and fresh bamboo.

3:30-3:40 Feed panda cake.

On Monday we were able to have a lecture/discussion with the chief veterinarian at this center and learned a lot about what they have done for captive breeding and the origins of the center. Aside from volunteering I spend time walking around the facility watching different pandas and enjoying the amazing insects and amphibians in the bamboo forest, eating Popsicles and working on my final research paper. It is now day three of our volunteer experience and it is nice working with the same keeper and pandas each day!

Panda Fact of the Post:

-Giant Pandas poop about 97 times a day.

Trek 2

We left for Rilong early in the morning on July 12th in Jeep like vehicles. The drive was supposed to take six hours, but the trend on this trip so far has been to add a few hours to any drive time. After leaving the smoggy city life we were surrounded by huge lush green mountains! Due to the earthquake in 2008, a lot of the road is not well maintained and our driver had us looking out for falling rocks and landslides as he focused on the road. Along the way we saw many Pacific Swift flying around the mountain slopes in the misty haze.We stayed at a small hostel in Rilong and felt the difference in elevation as we became winded just from walking up the stairs to our rooms. Due to being at such altitude, we all had to purchase some warmer gear before we hiked out in the morning.

It took us about five hour to hike through ankle deep mud to our first campsite. We were originally going to camp by the river, but due to so many Japanese tourists, we had to take a different campsite. There was a small stone house there which our Tibetan guides used to cook and sleep in. One of the young men was actually born in that house!

We spent three nights at this campsite adjusting to the altitude.

Here we saw a variety of birds including a few different species of Rose Finch, Spotbreasted babler, Himalayan swiftlet, Russet sparrow, and Himalayan griffon. We gave our group presentations on different primary papers regarding Giant Panda conservation. My group presented a behavioral study comparing mating behaviors in captive Giant Pandas during non-mating and mating seasons as well as in small individual cages vs. larger playpen enclosures. Other groups presented on topics such as the effect of fuel wood harvest on GP habitat, the variation in microhabitat between Giant and Red pandas and a review on habitat fragmentation and possible implementation of wildlife corridors for GP habitat. We took our second quiz at this campsite. I also built a rock tower and got a few other people to start making rock art with me!

The hike to our next campsite was shorter, but practically vertical; taking us to an elevation around 15,000 feet! We only spent one night here, but it was pretty great to spend the night above the tree line.

Here we had a lecture on wildlife trade, which makes me wonder about the origins of my corn snake and leopard gecko back at home.

Waking up literally inside of a cloud provided to difficulty seeing the trail as we descended the mountain. This hike was straight down the side of a very steep mountain full of slippery mud until we reached the tree line where we then walking in thick, sticky mud. It was a lot of fun hiking through this area. We beat the horses to our next campsite, so we warmed by the fire in a local family’s stone home and ended up camping in their backyard. The next day was the first warm and sunny day of the trek, so as we hiked to our final campsite we were all taking advantage of the sun! This hike took us into the Four Sisters Park, which was absolutely amazing! Every time I looked up I was surrounded by snow-capped mountains and green lush slopes. It is almost painful how beautiful this area was. We spent two nights at this amazing campsite where we did an aquatic survey and a vegetation survey. In the aquatic survey, we found mayfly larvae, caddisfly larvae and a few other freshwater invertebrates. Our campsite was surrounded by grazing Yaks and horses along with a few very young and adorable yaks and horses.

The hike back to Rilong was almost five hours and I was reluctant to leave such natural beauty. Yesterday morning we had a jeep ride to Yaan, which is where I am until tomorrow morning. This is the nicest hotel we have stayed at the whole trip, there are western toilets, shampoo and towels! Oh how camping makes the appreciation for modern commodities much fonder. Yesterday afternoon in the hotel lobby we had our third quiz and this morning we had a lecture on Gibbons in China. Tomorrow we leave for the Befanxia Panda Concervation Center where we will be volunteering for the next nine days. Since it is expensive to enter and leave the reserve that the Panda Center is located in we have to stock up on food before we head there.

Hopefully while at Befanxia I will be able to conduct a few interviews with local community members which I will use in my final paper about community approach to Giant Panda habitat conservation efforts. The internet situation there is still unknown, so it could be another long stretch until the next post.

Panda fact of the post:

-Giant Pandas have evolved from carnivory to herbivory, but kept the prior digestive system (meaning they cannot digest cellulose). This means that they have to eat for at least 14 hours a day in order to recieve enough nutrients from their food.

Leaving Chengdu Again

The day after we arrived back at Chengdu we visited the Asiatic Black Bear life-time care facility run by an organization called AnimalsAsia started by Jill Robertson. Unfortunately she was unable to meet with us when we were there, but we had a wonderful guide and met some graduate students from Denver University working on a conservation social work project idea. It was great to talk with them because there is a great importance in one health dealing with both wildlife and people on the same level.

Yesterday was our day off and it was spent cleaning everything still filthy from the camping trip, walking around town and visiting an almost fully Daoist temple. It was great to visit the temple with our Chinese guide because he helped interpret a lot of the information presented and he told us about much of the beautiful structures we saw.

Today we had two guest lecturers. One was a gentleman from the Chengdu Bird Watching Society who told us a bit about local birds and showed us some of his amazing and unique bird photos. The second was a professor at the Sichuan University who is heavily involved in Giant Panda captive breading and reintroduction to the wild. He was a great resource to be able to meet and ask questions for our research papers!

The past three days here in Chengdu we have had some amazing food! There are two noodle places which I was involved in finding that have become extremely popular amongst the group. One of them is a little hole in the wall islamic restaurant and the gentleman makes the noodles right in front of you using a special technique which takes at least one year to train to be able to be competant. He stretches a piece of dough to create one noodle which you eat. It is fantastic to both watch and eat!

In the morning we head out to Rilong where our second trek will begin. This time we will take jeeps with 4WD for about 5 hours to get to the town closest to where we trek from. This time we will be camping up in the bamboo forest and will hopefully be able to see more wildlife.

*For clarification there is a post about the last trek which will hopefully be able to be posted soon enough so things should make more sense*

Panda fact of the post:

-GP's released back into the wild use a soft release technique to acclimate the individuals into a wild setting. This process takes about one to two years until the panda is fully released into the wild.

Camping Trip #1

I am now back in Chengdu after traveling to songpan for a seven day camping trip. Songpan is a small town near Tibet, which was about a six hour public bus ride to. It was a good thing we had horses to carry our packs because the terrain was quite tricky and we were at about 3,000 meters elevation. The hike to our first campsite was about five and a half hours. We stayed at this site for two nights and did a day trip to Mounigou Scenic Area where there was a hot spring, which was not very hot yet still refreshing. I was having a few stomach issues after the second night, so I rode a horse to the second camp site instead of hiking for two hours. We spent four nights at the second site, which was much more scenic than the first one. At this site we conducted a GPS activity, a freshwater river survey and a vegetation survey in addition to having lectures about global conservation issues, freshwater systems, wildlife rehabilitation and Asiatic Black Bears. In relation to the lecture on wildlife rehabilitation, I spoke about my volunteer work at the International Bird Research Rescue Center (IBRRC), which spurred a fantastic story time where others in the group spoke about their wildlife or animal experiences as well. Our American TA and Chinese guide gave us a few Mandarin lessons, which now came in much handy in Chengdu. Our guides for the entire trek were amazing, have a lot of fun energy sitting around the campfire every night singing songs, drinking "fire water" and smoking far to many cigarettes.

On the trek back to songpan, one of our guides told us that all trails lead back to songpan. With this knowledge a few of us took an unexpected alternate route which was much more difficult than the intended trek seeing as we climbed an extra three peaks. We ended up taking a few extra hours to return to the hostel, but had an amazing time since we were able to see many more mountains than the others and feasted on wild strawberries as we hiked.

During this camping trip there was almost constant rain for the last few days causing a landslide, which blocked the road back to Chengdu. Since the intended six hour bus ride was no longer a possibility, we had to take a twelve hour bus ride. This ride ended up taking about 14 hours due to traffic and the usual bus issues. Now back at a more normal elevation, the heat is engulfing and the city is as busy as usual. A few of us had a great dinner in town and are looking forward to tomorrows activities!

Panda fact of the post:

Giant and Red pandas both have a sixth digit, which they use to grasp bamboo. This is a synapamorphic trait.