A BLACK AND WHITE BEAR

Exploring the many panda reserves of Sichuan province

I have seen a few bears over the years. Black bears in Quebec trying to get into our garbage at the cottage. A pissed off grizzly sow standing a full 8 feet tall with her 2 cubs hugging her hind legs as we hovered in a helicopter near a river in Yukon, polar bears on the shore of Hudson Bay. I even saw the very elusive sun bear in a Sri Lankan national park. Each one of these bears made you think “ok, I’m gonna leave you on your own, don’t mind me”.The last thing you want to do is run up to them for a hug.

Which is exactly what I wanted to do when I saw my first panda in Chengdu’s Panda Breeding Centre. There it was sitting against a tree, munching away at a bamboo cane. Pandas eat. A Lot. And they eat mostly bamboo, roughly 30 lbs of it each day. The fact there is only between 1600-2000 pandas left in the wild makes them very rare and the flagship of wildlife conservation around the world. What struck me during my research on panda centers in Sichuan was how the Chinese are so proud of these bears and how spoiled the bears are. From incubators to nurseries to play pens, the cubs each represent one more step away from extinction and one more Chinese icon. Adults are fed, weighed, looked after by teams of Chinese biologists and caregivers and volunteers non stop. Each one of the public panda reserves has a role, from massive ones like the Panda Research Center in Chengdu who holds close to 87 pandas of different ages to more remote ones like in Dujiangyan and Wolong who specialize at getting pandas ready to be released in the wild.

LITTLE KNOWN FACT:

All pandas living in zoos around the world are loaned by the Chinese government.

BEST MONTHS TO VISIT:

May or October

Longitude 80 offers a private Sichuan itinerary of 9 days including 3 days in Chengdu and 6 days in other research areas focusing on pandas, the conservation and research by Chinese authorities and also include 2 days of volunteer work.