Vanessa's Journal

Dec. 11

Today was a complete whirlwind.  I started out down in the main town of Wolong, Shawan.  Before hiking up the mountain to Wuyipeng, I stopped by the home of an old panda trapping expert named Lao Peng.  He was part of the original team of panda trappers at Wuyipeng back in the 1980s.  I would love to have him up here helping us, but he is now over 70 years old and no longer climbs the mountains.  He has a special energy about him that is hard to describe.  You can almost look into his eyes and see part of the history of Wolong.  He offered some words of encouragement and I said that I would keep in touch with him about our progress and perhaps seek out his advice if werun into trouble.  After all, he knows Wuyipeng like the back of his hand. 

Then I hiked up to Wuyipeng.  It was a nice day for a hike and I happened into one of the colorful pheasants that grace the underbrush in the mountains here.  It was a male and was not too happy to see me.  I was overjoyed to see him, t brought back memories of happening upon rare birds almost daily last summer. 

Once at Wuyipeng, things seemed to suddenly move so much faster.  My field assistants seemed to be waiting for my arrival to do a whole list of things and as soon as they saw me, they sprung into action.  First order of business was the ceremonial slaughtering of one of the chickens as an offering.  This was explained to me as one of the key components of our religious preparations for trapping.  This was followed by a small ceremony in the back of our research station that involved burning incense and yellow paper, offering the chicken and alcohol, and setting off a small collection of fireworks.  Afterward, I had an almost eerie sensation as if finally, after a great deal of preparation and a few stops and starts, we were officially starting the trapping season. 

We ate and then got ourselves ready to go out in the field to set our first trap. Lao Yang and Lao Fan showed me the goat that they had slaughtered for the bait in the traps while I was in Chengdu buying my computer. They decided that the first cage would contain the goat’s head. 

After a 20-minute hike, we arrived at our first trap.  It was a wooden one (we have seven altogether -  four metal and three wooden).  I had not seen this one yet, as it was constructed back in September when I was at school.  I was really impressed; it was pure genius on the part of Lao Wang, Lao Fan, and Lao Yang.  They proudly gave me a few demonstrations and then baited the cage with the goat head.  We decided, given that it was late in the day, to just do this one test trap for today and see how it goes.  I think we are ready to bait all of them tomorrow.

At night I uploaded the data from when we tested the GPS collars and checked it out on my computer. I was looking for two things:  whether the collars were successful at collecting fixes and how accurate they were in their location estimates.  I found positive results on both fronts and feel confident preparing them for final deployment.