Vanessa's Journal

Dec. 18

Today I worked on a presentation that I am preparing for the Ecology Lab on animal reintroductions and my thoughts on how the latest phase of giant panda reintroduction should proceed.  It is a project they are working on and they specifically asked for my advice, so I’m trying to present some organized thoughts on the subject. 

Reintroduction means releasing animals from captivity to the wild.  It is such a challenging task because often in captivity animals are not exposed to the proper stimuli that would allow them to learn survival skills.  It is a difficult deficit to make up but they are giving it a try with pandas. I go through the majority of the English version of my presentation and about half way through my first draft of Chinese translation.  I’ll have to have people check over my Chinese version, but it’s a start.  It’s good to have assignments like this to keep me busy.  I also finished the book I was working on…on to the next one.

The exciting news of the day is that we now have a working telephone at the field station! In all the years that this field station has been here, there has never been a telephone.  This is a first! My field assistants were so excited about it.  You should have seen us all when we got our first phone call … we all ran to get it like five year olds learning to answer the phone for the first time.  I think it will be a good thing to have for emergencies and keeping in touch with our collaborators down in town.

My field assistants saw a Sambar in person today on the trails! I am again so jealous.  It seems like they always see wild animals when I’m not there.  It’s either a conspiracy or it has to do with the fact that they tread so lightly and effortlessly on the trails while hiking and I am so awkward while tripping over myself and sounding like a herd of elephants.  I’m sure I scare all the animals away. 

Lao Yang went down to his home after dinner to see his wife and I will go out tomorrow to check traps with Lao Fan.  At night, we have a birthday/goodbye party planned for my fellow PhD student Wei Liu at the field station. I anticipate it to be a big blowout.  Stay tuned.