Catching a Panda

Habitat, survival and secrets of how we coexist with nature

MSU's panda habitat research team has spent years collecting mountains of data aimed at understanding and saving Giant Pandas. Vanessa Hull again will be atop the mountain — a real, rugged mountain in China—and the big chunk of data she needs has fur.

Join us for a second season as we follow Vanessa Hull’s quest to catch a panda. She’s a Michigan State doctoral student living in a research station in the remote mountains of Sichuan, China, and aimsto capture, collar and track up to four wild pandas using advanced global positioning systems.

For the past dozen years, the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, led by Jianguo “Jack” Liu , painstakingly has gathered and crunched data on the pandas’ habitat, in collaboration with Professor Zhiyun Ouyang at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Director Hemin Zhang at Wolong Nature Reserve, with support from NSF, NASA, National Natural Science Foundation of China, and other sources.

The scientists have made groundbreaking discoveries on the give-and-take between panda and human survival in the bamboo jungles, mountains and farmland of the Wolong Nature Reserve, home of the famous panda research and breeding center.

Panda habitat key to panda survival
The Giant Pandas are the darlings of their native China, and the world. Travel to China and their images are everywhere — as stuffed animals, cartoons, posters and souvenirs.

Walk through panda habitat and they’re invisible. Pandas are endangered. Estimates of panda numbers in the wild range from 1,600 or less to 3,000. Pandas are particular. Nonnegotiable to the panda is a home that offers lots of choice bamboo, mature trees strong enough to hold a napping panda, ideal temperature and a comfy slope.

Pandas share their home, even in reserves, with people locked in their own struggle to survive. The logging and farming that provides humans heat for their homes and income to survive has wiped out acres of panda-friendly terrain.

Recent history is steeped in irony. China’s efforts to save the pandas have made the nature reserves an irresistible tourist attraction. Panda fans on ecotourism trips flock like groupies. This commerce and development degrades panda habitat, and the May 2008 earthquake that killed tens of thousands in that area caused further destruction.

New technology, long-standing questions
Vanessa, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, was among the first to obtain permits to trap the pandas and fit them with safe GPS collars. She and the team map where these elusive creatures go, effectively letting the pandas tell the researchers the habitat they like best.

Scientists can mesh what the pandas tell them with that mountain of data. It can help them identify the most hospitable panda neighborhoods, learn how to preserve those and create more.

But first, Vanessa must catch a panda… or four. Come along and learn about the work—and the journey up the mountain.