PANDA REWILDING | Facts and Details

REWILDING PANDAS IN CHINA

Shenshuping protection base home to more than 50 giant pandas

The long term goal of China’s giant panda artificial breeding efforts is to boost wild panda numbers by releasing captive-bred animals into the wild. China now has a sizable population of captive and artificially-bred pandas.

Nectar Gan of CNN wrote: Deep in the misty mountains above the Shenshuping breeding site at Wolong Nature Reserve lies the Tiantaishan rewilding base, where select panda cubs are prepared for life in the wild.Here, bamboo trees often have messy, broken branches – an unmistakable sign of feeding for the trained eye. When the cubs reach 1 year old, they are brought into the base’s wild enclosures with their mothers to learn vital survival skills such as foraging, finding water, and dealing with other wildlife like black bears and wild boars. If deemed ready, the youngster will be released into the wilderness at around 2 years old to face all its beauty, rawness, and dangers on its own. Many don’t pass the strict qualification process and spend the rest of their lives in captivity.[Source: Nectar Gan, CNN, January 27, 2025]

Unlike pandas born in zoos, these rewilding candidates are born in large, semi-natural enclosures, raised entirely by their mothers, with minimal human contact. Staff have come up with an intriguing way to shield the bears from people — the panda suit. Keepers here only ever interact with their animal charges while dressed in full-body panda outfits, carefully scented with panda urine or feces.

China’s first attempt at releasing a panda into the wild in 2006 ended in tragedy when a 5-year-old bear, Xiang Xiang, was found dead in the snow less than a year later. He was believed to have fallen from height during a territorial fight with a wild male panda. The setback prompted the immediate suspension of the program.

Chinese researchers spent four years reflecting, learning, and refining their methods before restarting the training in its current form, where mother and cub learn to survive in the wild together. The next panda was released in 2012, and since then, 10 more have followed. One of them died six weeks after release, due to a bacterial infection, and at least two pandas perished during training, according to state media reports at the time.

Each failure and loss in China were met with fierce public backlash, and the pressure has likely led researchers to err on the side of caution in releasing more pandas, Huang said. “The progress has been slow because the species is so valuable, it’s like a treasure. Any misstep will have huge consequences in the public domain,” he said.

Wolong Nature Reserve

Wolong Nature Reserve (120 kilometers northwest of Chengdu, two hour by bus from Chengdu) is the panda reserve most visited by Western scientists and tourists and is a center of China's panda rewilding effort. The terrain is rugged and the bamboo forest are so dense that likelihood of seeing a panda in the wild is rare. Tourists are often restricted from going much of anywhere anyway. Most visitors stay close to the big research center and veterinary hospital. Wolong means “sleeping dragon."

Set up in 1963, Wolong Reserve covers 500,000 acres (800 square miles) and is home to about 150 pandas as well 20 kinds of reptile, 280 species of bird and 4,000 species of plant . Among the 96 mammal species are endangered golden monkeys, which travel in groups up to 300 animals; takin, a strange looking animal related to the musk ox; and tufted deer, which have odd-looking, protruding canine teeth. Around 3,000 people, most of then members of the Tibetan-like Qiang minority, farm some of the slopes in the reserve.

Raising Captive Bred Pandas

panda workers in suits at Shenshuping

The average cost of maintaining a panda, mainly food and medicine, at Wolong is about $5,000 a year. Staff that work with young pandas at the China Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Chengdu disguise themselves in panda costumes when they approach the animals. The facility in Chengdu disposes of 200 tons of panda dropping a year.

In captivity scientist often swap twins — with the favored cub being replaced with the rejected one and visa versa’so both cubs get the mother’s attention and milk for half the time.

Captive pandas get sick easily, often digestive tract disorders. Baby pandas must be handled frequently and rolled from side to side otherwise their intestines become flattened or distorted. Mother pandas constantly move the infants around to prevent this from happening. Young pandas often suffer from bloating when bamboo gets stuck in their digestive system. At Wolong bloated pandas are frequently rushed into the emergency room.

Pandas are generally docile and don’t move around much and are easy to control in captivity. Captive pandas generally live longer and become bigger and heavier than wild pandas. They are fed bamboo along with apples, carrots, bread and nutritional supplements,

Pandas at the Chengdu center produce a ton of droppings a month. The facility pays $770 a month to clean up the mess. Some of the dung is sterilized under 3000 degrees C heat and sold as an odor free souvenir with a Beijing Olympics panda mascots on the package.

Release of Captive Bred Pandas Into the Wild

In April 2006, a captive-bred panda named Xiang Xiang was taken away from his pampered life at Wolong and plopped in the middle of a bamboo forest to fend for himself. The four-year-old male was the first captive-bred panda to be released in the wild. He was prepared in a 10-square-mile enclosed area and taught feeding and nesting skills. Before he was released his supply of bamboo was reduced to encourage him to forage on his own.

Some have doubts about the scheme or returning pandas to the wild. A few months after he was released scientists found that Xiang Xiang’s radio collar wasn’t working. They tracked him down and found he had been injured in a fight with another male presumably over territory. He was patched up and returned to the forest. A few weeks later Xiang Xiang disappeared. It is thought he had another encounter with a male and fell while trying to climb a tree to escape and broke his leg. Efforts to find him turned up empty. Huang Yan, vice-director research at Wolong told The Times: “Xiang Xiang’s training did not start until he was two and he had already come to depend a lot on humans. The experience we gained from Xiang Xiang is that the training should begin as early as possible.

Chinese scientist have not given up. As of late 2007, four other pandas were being prepared for release into the wild. According to the plan the next panda to be released will be a pregnant female, who her keepers say will be less of a threat to wild male pandas and better prepared than Xiang Xiang to fend for herself.

As of 2016, five animals had been released. They were all wearing tracking collars. Three were still out there at that time. Two were found dead.Those losses were “media disasters for China.” Of the survivors Tao Tao (Little Rascal), a male, had survived nearly four years in the wild. Zhang Xiang (The Thoughtful One) was released in Liziping Nature Reserve in 2013. She was the first female released since reintroductions began. She was doing okay in 2016. David Wildt, the head of the species survival team at Wolong told National Geographic each case led scientists to “try to think more like a panda, to understand what the bears truly need” and refine training and release protocols. In 2016 three pandas were being considered for release. [Source: Jennifer S. Holland, National Geographic Traveller, August, 2016]

Training Captive Bred Pandas

Wolong has created a 75-acre enclosure where pandas live for several years as a sort of halfway house before being released to the wild. The plan is for only lone females or male-female pairs to be released to avoid conflicts with dominant males. There has been some discussion of using police dogs to teach the pandas fighting skills. Already four pandas at Woolong live with a specially-trained police dog or other animals, with the idea that the pandas would learn how to protect themselves by observing the dog and other animals, increasing their chances of survival in the wild.

Jennifer S. Holland wrote in National Geographic Traveller: “Select cubs are trained for life in the wild at Hetaoping. Keepers wear full-body panda costumes scented with panda urine so that young bears don’t get used to humans. A cub here remains with its mother, and over two years, while in her care, he or she is eased toward wildness. After a year or so, the pair is moved to a large, fenced-in habitat up the mountain where the mother can continue coaching her offspring until the youngster is released—if deemed fit for freedom. To qualify a young panda must be independent; wary of other animals, including humans; and capable of finding food and shelter unaided. Not all are. “Like breeding, rewilding pandas “will take trial and error, time and money,” an American scientists involved in the project said.” [Source: Jennifer S. Holland, National Geographic Traveller, August, 2016]

“In a training enclosure in Wolong, Ye Ye—a female whose name honors the friendship between Japan and China—appears at the fence looking for a handout. Her cub Hua Yan (Pretty Girl) is nowhere to be seen, and that’s a good sign. Independence is key to survival—and the three-year-old cub, her training nearly complete, will soon be released into the wild. But first, it’s another cub’s turn. Over four days in mid-November, Hua Jiao (Delicate Beauty) is caught, given a final health check, fitted with a collar, crated, and driven 200 miles to the Liziping Nature Reserve. It has good bear habitat and a small panda population ripe for a new member.

“It’s a day that’s been in the works since the start of this exceptional conservation experiment. Saving pandas is a bear-by-bear process, Hua Jiao’s release a small but essential step on a long, rocky path. With five other cubs at Wolong up for release within a few years, panda conservation will doubtless be in the news. Whether for tragedy or triumph, no one can say.

“On this November morning, under a bright blue sky, four men lift Hua Jiao’s cage from the truck and position it facing the forest. Bamboo-draped barriers conceal spectators and point the way forward. Without fanfare, a keeper unlatches the door. At first the young panda stays put at the back of the crate, munching bamboo, her last captive meal. After today she’ll fend for herself in every way. In a few years she may seek a mate and could add five or more cubs to the population over her lifetime. It’s not a game-changing number, but for an endangered species with fewer than 2,000 animals in the wild, every individual counts. Finally, with some coaxing from the keepers, Hua Jiao emerges, blinking into the light, her paws sinking into the soft soil. And then, without a glance back at her captors and the life she’s known thus far, she lopes toward freedom.

Pandas Valley Training Center

The "Panda Valley" project aims to introduce pandas born in captivity into the wild using a strategy that hadn’t been tried before with pandas. The project feature three zones that effectively act as buffers between man and the wild, with the pandas rotating between them and acclimatizing to reduced human contact. The zones were completed in 2015, and the first pandas were relocated there the following year, with a goal of setting them free within 10-20 years. A leader of the project said, "We have to be very, very careful...Many others have tried this and failed."

Leo Lewis wrote in The Times, “Six giant pandas, born and raised in captivity, padded out of their cages for the first time to confront the bewildering terrors of nature: 50 television cameras, a phalanx of Chinese officials, a grinning basketball star and a huge electric fence. The young pandas, two male and four female, began their training program in the semi-wild environment of Panda Valley with predictable anxiety. One climbed a log bridge strung between two manicured trees, another prodded at a bale of bamboo. A third lolloped into the perimeter trench and admired the concrete wall separating him from the dangers of the countryside of southwestern Sichuan province. [Source: Leo Lewis, The Times, January 12, 2012]

If any of the animals become too vexed by all that natural savagery, explained one panda researcher, they can always head back indoors. The experiment has been billed as the boldest attempt yet to introduce pandas bred in captivity to the wild. However, it could be more than a decade before Xingrong, Qiqi, Zhizhi and other members of the panda sextet are judged independent enough to leave their 20 hectare, minutely controlled enclosure. "The thinking behind the latest experiment is that, very gradually, life in the enclosure that is Panda Valley should come to mimic an actual valley of wild pandas. The six bears will be introduced to the idea of foraging, defending themselves from the dangers of the wild and mating.

The six pioneer pandas, aged between 2 and 4, were selected from 108 bred in the Chengdu Giant Panda Research Base. If their release is successful, researchers plan to repeat the process on a larger scale. The small enclosures will be expanded to train 30 pandas at a time with the aim of releasing more than 100 into the wild by 2060. The basketball player Yao Ming was on hand to offer his encouragement during the launch of the project.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, CNTO (China National Tourism Administration) David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2025