Quake moves MSU panda team to action

While communications to the Wolong Nature Reserve remain severely challenged and information sparse, Jianguo "Jack" Liu, leader of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, has confirmed that the three graduate students who work on his projects have survived the earthquake.

MSU's panda research team is working on ways to assist the pandas and the people who have been at ground zero in this research. The researchers have been trying to better understand the panda habitat and to save the giant pandas and other valuable resources there.

Jack Liu has managed a brief satellite phone call from the Wolong Nature Reserve, near the epicenter of the earthquake, where two graduate students—Wei Liu and Mao-Ning Tuan Mu—were working.

The place they were staying suffered damage, so the students stayed in a tent and helped with rescue efforts, such as connecting the satellite phone system and assisting in helicopter landings. Mu was able to leave after a few days, returning to his home in Taiwan before deciding his next move. Wei Liu has stayed to continue to help.

A third student, Yu "Chris" Li, is in Chengdu, and Jack Liu received word he also had escaped harm.

The Wolong Nature Reserve is the land in which doctoral student Vanessa Hull spent four months this winter attempting to capture and collar elusive giant pandas. She left without capturing pandas, but with information and appreciation for the area, which is rich in biodiversity.

There are reports that several dozen farmers in the reserve have died or have been injured. Numerous houses in Wolong have been destroyed.

And even as he spends most of his time working to learn more of the fate of those in Wolong, Jack Liu can't help but wonder about scientific implications of the earthquake.

"This earthquake has made me speculate on why the pandas had disappeared from the region where Vanessa tried to catch them," Jack Liu said. "There were many pandas in the region the year before. Perhaps pandas could sense an upcoming earthquake and left the area?"