Pandas are elusive—
wisdom is not

Traps empty (at least of giant pandas), but trapping season still has valuable catch

Vanessa didn’t catch a panda—this year.

Not for want of trying. Or dedication. Or expertise, support, or just plain gumption.

Rather, Vanessa Hull went to the mountain and blogged her heart out for some 12 weeks to deliver perhaps the most valuable lesson: Science is hard.

But while she’s back in East Lansing now, her four GPS tracking collars still boxed up, she also returns with a tremendous amount of knowledge about how pandas do—and don’t—move across their habitat in the rural mountains of Sichuan Province in China.

For the past dozen years, the MSU 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 the National Science Foundation, 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.

This winter, Vanessa lived in a research station in the remote mountains of Sichuan, China, looking to capture, collar and track up to four wild pandas using advanced global positioning systems.

She has inferred pandas—seeing signs of these rare and treasured animals. She’s wrestled to understand how climate affects their movements, in this case possibly foiling their trapping plans.

And she’s gained a richer understanding of the other animals that live in the Woolong Nature Reserve—and the people who live alongside them.

But the data she needs to finish her PhD dissertation—data that ideally would come wrapped in black and white fur—didn’t take the bait. So Vanessa will wait until next year, when she hopes to return.
Meanwhile the lessons, compelling and plentiful, can be found in Vanessa’s Journals. We’ve asked her to contribute periodically as she continues her work throughout the year and thank all of you who have followed her on her journey.