Vanessa's Journal

Dec. 15

What a day! Today I walked the loop to check traps with Lao Yang.  I decided to go out in place of Lao Fan, partly because I had an urge to get out there and get my hands dirty and partly because I sensed that Lao Fan needed a break (he was assigned ‘walkie-talkie’ work).  We continued our hilarious game of musical chairs only with boots. I got my old boots back for the day and Lao Yang wore Lao Fan’s boots.  By the end of this, we might as well have one merged wardrobe. 

The field work was a great experience. We left at 8:45 a.m. and got back at 4:05 p.m., so it was definitely a hike.  Because it was cold, we didn’t really stop for breaks except for brief pauses for pictures here and there, as well as a short lunch break.  As long as we kept moving, we didn’t feel cold, but as soon as we stopped for lunch, both of us sensed our hands freezing up and tried to eat as fast as we could to get back to hiking again.

My field assistants are great at spotting things out in the wild that others may not catch, such as animal footprints, feces, or other signs.  Today we saw signs of seven different mammal species on the trails -- sambar, takin, clouded tiger, tufted deer, giant panda, red panda, and forest musk deer. And we weren’t even trying to look for them. We just counted the ones we practically tripped over while walking. 

I think that this really highlights the fact that giant panda habitat is extremely diverse.  We think of it being ‘panda habitat’, but it is really habitat for so many creatures.  We didn’t try to count the plant species we came across, but if we had, we would have been there for hours.  Our observations made me feel a little better about our earlier trail cutting exploits, as it seems that just as we like to travel along the most energy efficient pathways, so do the animals.  Without a scientific experiment that would compare the number of sightings on the trails versus in non-trail areas, it is difficult to say whether the animals ‘prefer’ the trails as such.  However, it is obvious that they are not avoiding them. 

It was also good to see all seven of the traps.  They all seem to be up and running.  The squirrels seem to be sneaking pieces of meat in two of the traps without getting caught (because they are so light, they don’t set off the doors to close).  Other than that, we have no bites (yet!). When we were approaching the traps, I would get that nervous butterflies-in-stomach type feeling as I anticipated whether or not an animal was inside.  We could usually tell right away by whether the front door of the trap was noticeably sticking up (and thus open).  Better luck next time, I suppose. 

It always amazes me how the habitat changes so rapidly when we hike up along an elevational gradient.  We started at around 2,500 m and went above 3,000 m and then back down again.  During that time, as we hiked to higher elevation, we saw an increase in snow cover and a decrease in temperature, as well as variations in the plant communities to go along with the change in climate. 

We start by hiking through Erdaoping, a picturesque plateau that is famous in panda literature for being an old stomping ground for pandas in the 1980s.  It is still used somewhat today, but not as intensely as before. Then we hike up to Jianpengzi, arguably my favorite place in Wolong. It is at a high elevation (above 3,000 m) and is full of large majestic coniferous trees. It is also eerily silent, but at the same time supposedly teeming with pandas. This area contains two traps and is thought to be our best chance to catch pandas. Then we hike down through Zhuangjinggou and into Yaopengzi, areas that each have one trap.  We loop around over to Baiyan, a place that I love for its beautiful precipice from which you can see mountains all around you in the distance.  It is well known for being ‘the place’ to take pictures up at Wuyipeng.  

The hike around to see all of the traps is sort of like a figure 8.  It might seem more efficient to do it in one big circle, but we don’t for two reasons.  The first is that the traps at Jianpengzi (the highest elevation point in the trapping area and the farthest from the Wuyipeng field station) are the ones that we think give us the best chance of capturing pandas.  Therefore, we would like to visit those first.  Secondly, because of the way the slopes are structured, it is easier to start the day doing ‘the hard part’ (up the slope) and leave ‘the easy part’ (down the slope) until the end of the day. 

At the end of the hike, I was tired and my legs were sore, but I thought it was a fruitful day.  I definitely have a greater appreciation for all of the hard work by my assistants in the last week or so out in the field while I have been preoccupied with computer and organization/planning work.   We are trying to set up a rotational schedule where I go out in the field at least a few days each week so that I maintain connected with what is going on out there and also so that my field assistants can get occasional much-needed breaks.