Since the middle of the last decade, significant changes have been afoot at the Wolong breeding center, ultimately to the benefit of the pandas as a whole. CRES researchers and other scientific and veterinary staff involved themselves, in collaboration with the Chinese researchers of Wolong, in all manner of inquiry about panda biology, nutrition, social dynamics, and reproduction. This effort resulted in a tremendous turnaround in captive panda management, and a population boom began at the world’s premier panda breeding center.
In developing a large, self-sustaining population in managed care, the giant panda species was provided with a type of buffer against stochastic events that might wipe out large swaths of the wild population, or minimize the ability of the wild bears to continue to maintain their numbers. It may sound like a reach to worry that wild pandas could suffer such a population bottleneck, but conservationists will tell you that population fragmentation (which the panda suffers due to encroachment by human homes, roads, and farms) plus rare catastrophic events (such as extreme climate fluctuations or mass bamboo die offs) can seriously damage the potential of any wild population to repair itself. The large breeding populations in captive facilities in China provide a type of managed reservoir of animal and genetic stock with which to guard against the loss of a species as a whole.
Suzanne observes two pandas wrestling inside one of the natural pens at Wolong.
Improving the reproductive output of the Wolong captive population was just the beginning. Once the population boom became a reality, other factors for panda management came into play. For instance, how does one house such a vigorously increasing group of bears? The answer: build more pens. But the staff of Wolong chose not to replicate the small pens of the past in addressing their expansions since 2000. Large, multi-hectare pens have been erected in which large areas of natural habitat adjacent to the breeding center have been fenced in. The enclosed trees, logs, grass, and rocks have been left as they were prior to the expansion, providing numerous and natural exhibit “furnishings” for bears to lie on, play with, or climb up. In this sense, these exhibits are better than those of any panda housed currently inside the U.S.; none of the pandas here can claim access to natural habitat and natural climactic conditions or such expansive spaces.
The large spaces can accommodate more than one bear per pen (personalities permitting), but even so, the increasing population of Wolong must invariably require that not all bears can roam the expansive native habitats all the time. Some bears must reside in the smaller original pens. At times, such as breeding or birthing season, these smaller pens are more conducive to proper management of bears who are being introduced for a mating, or for females who are “denned up” and will not utilize larger spaces as they would at other times. And yet, even during those times, the pens were rather inadequate to maintain healthy, curious animals. As such, these pens have also been refurbished over the years. Where once stood bare, dirt-and-cement housing yards, now sit pens with climbing structures, digging pits, and pools for water. Enrichment is provided to stimulate the bears and change up the everyday aspects of their housing situation. And best of all: no bear is relegated to the smaller pens for long. The animals all rotate through the larger native habitats on a regular basis so that each panda can reap the benefit of living in such a complex and natural space.
Exterior of the old pen rows, improved with bamboo plantings and handrails
Further structural improvements at Wolong have taken place outside the pens. Handrails have been placed to keep the visiting public back from the pen edges. Bamboo hedges have been planted to provide shade and a more natural facade around the smaller pens. To reduce the pandas’ stress, visitors are now generally limited to viewing pens from one side only, allowing the bears an area to retreat to when they want to distance themselves from the center’s tourist traffic. And significantly, a new, well-equipped veterinary hospital has been built to improve the health management of these animals.
This is the “home” Mei Sheng will return to soon. He can expect to be treated a bit like a celebrity, much as his sister has been. But even if he is “just one of the guys,” he will be afforded the opportunity to climb the highest trees and dig in native soil. There will be fragrant pine trees for him to sniff and rub against, large rocks for him to scratch against, and climate changes which will result in interesting variability too: snow, rhododendron blossoms, bamboo shoots, mud, ice, rain, fog, and mist in quantities he has never experienced in San Diego. Though he may be our California boy, I have no doubt that in short order his Chinese side will revel in the weather that is common to Wolong, China.
So, what started as an attempt to give you some history and insight into Wolong has turned into a lengthy descriptor of what Mei Sheng can expect and how it came to pass that the Wolong of today has transformed itself. And still I am not finished. Next week I will tell you more about Wolong from a more human perspective: mine. I visited there for three months in 2000, and then again in 2002, to conduct research on panda maternal care and breeding behavior. I’ll tell you a bit about what the goals of our research were, and what is was like to immerse myself in the radically different surrounds of the mountains of Sichuan.
Suzanne Hall is a senior research technician with the Giant Panda Unit of Applied Animal Ecology/CRES.
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