Vanessa's Journal

Feb. 13

I was able to finish my reading of the “Giant Pandas of Wolong” book today. One thing I learned about red pandas that I had not appreciated before is that they have small pores on their palms that secrete a fluid that may be used in scent communication. It is also interesting to me that the scent-marking behavior is so similar in red and giant pandas.  It is a whole different language that we as humans cannot fully appreciate. 

They also talked about bamboo flowering, which I think is an important issue to discuss in giant panda conservation.  Bamboo flowers every 40-120 years or so (depending on the species) and then it dies.  It often flowers and dies synchronously over large areas.  There are periodic flowering events in giant panda habitat and their impact on the species is variable. The most important thing to remember is that there needs to be multiple bamboo species available to any given population of giant pandas for them to survive.  If this condition is met, then if one bamboo species dies, the other species will be there to sustain the pandas until the bamboo grows back.  This is how giant pandas have survived for centuries; they simply have moved to another nearby area to feed on another bamboo species during flowering events.

The real threat is with respect to human impacts, since humans have taken over lower elevation panda habitat and cut down a lot of the bamboo that grows there.  Therefore, in some areas, there aren’t at least two species of bamboo available and the giant pandas are thus highly vulnerable to starvation if a flowering event were to occur. I think it is important to remember the importance of diversity within the bamboo population when discussing requirements for giant panda long-term survival.

On the trapping front, Lao Fan and Lao Yang have started their own “independent study projects,” if you will. They are perplexed about some things that have been going on at the metal traps and have wrestled with the issue for the whole field season. They are determined to get to the bottom of it. We have seen footprints of a variety of animals inside these traps, including squirrel, yellow-throated marten, leopard cat, and red panda. However, they are convinced that the larger animals: the leopard cat and red panda, have not actually touched the meat inside the metal traps. For some reason, they walk in and then walk out and then maybe later eat some meat on the outside of the trap (even though the meat on the inside is more plentiful and sometimes fresher).  It is indeed perplexing. They have a new theory that there is too much snow on the ground in the traps, which first of all makes it a wet and uninviting place to come and hang out and second of all may cause a visual blockage that obstructs the animal’s view of the meat.  So they cleared out some snow from in there and are going to see if it helps.  I’m not really sure what is going on, but we definitely have to figure it out.