OF THE 18 MILLION RESIDENTS OF CHENGDU ABOUT 100 are pandas. In fact, giant pandas are the main reason tourists visit Chengdu. Not only is it the home of the Chengdu Panda Reserve, it is only two hours from the Bifengxia Panda breeding center, 7000 feet up in the bamboo covered mountains where we spent yesterday morning as volunteer panda pooper scoopers. It’s sad that with only 1000 or so giant pandas in the wild that breeding programs like this are the only hope for their survival.
Baby pandas in incubator
Jane, our guide in Chegdu, told us to be ready to leave at 6:40 so we would have time to get our briefing and dress in the official coveralls by 9:00. As volunteer opportunities go, it wasn’t very taxing. Or stimulating. But our reward for carting some bamboo for panda snacks and swamping out their cages was the opportunity to hand feed apples and cake specially enriched with vitamins and minerals to three of giant pandas and to coax them onto the scales for daily weighing.
Panda Chow
They may look cuddly but the critters weighed in at 275 pounds! We felt sorry for 19 year-old Austrian Anna who signed on for two weeks, much of which she spent waiting for the giant pandas to convert the bamboo she fed them into the green poop she — and we — would clean up. Still, it was a chance to visit behind the scenes, something the thousands of regular visitors would never see.
Pooper scoopers, a new entry on our CVs
This morning we visited the Chengdu Panda Reserve, arriving well before the crowds. Jane may be a rookie guide but she has her city wired. Although the reserve is within Chengdu city limits, it feels like you are in a bamboo forest, even more natural than Bifengxia. The pandas range from newborn babies to breeding adults. The adults are free to roam and browse the local plants and bamboo. The new-borns are kept warm in incubators while the kindergarten aged pandas and teen-agers romp in their special areas. In addition to the black and white giant pandas the reserve has several red pandas that look like large auburn racoons.
Red panda
