“When I found panda droppings in the wild for the first time, I was really excited,” said Zhang Dongling, a “post-90s” girl.
Zhang Dongling is a member of the patrol team at the Xinying County Management and Protection Station of the Giant Panda National Park. In this team, there are 9 female investigators, making up two-thirds of the group. Together, they serve as the “poop collectors” for giant pandas, contributing to the protection of wild pandas and their habitats.
Searching for Panda Traces in the Deep Mountains and Dense Forests
“My hometown is the ‘ancestral home’ of giant pandas, Baoxing. Even my grandparents’ generation had relatives who saw giant pandas with their own eyes. The environment around me is rich in panda culture,” Zhang Dongling explained. She has had a deep connection with giant pandas since childhood, which led her to choose a major in animal genetics and eventually join a nature reserve.
Zhang Dongling recalls her first trip into the mountains to conduct panda line surveys, which occurred on the second day of her job. Although she had prior fieldwork experience in the reserve during her studies, the humid climate of Ya’an Xinying still posed some discomfort. It was nearing winter, and the mountains were already covered in a thick layer of snow. Despite wearing rain boots and a raincoat when entering, she was soaked through by the time she came back down, with her hair frozen into icicles, “each strand like carrot sticks.”
The reason these investigators are called the “poop collectors” for giant pandas is tied to their work in the mountains. From March to June and from September to November—periods when fresh panda droppings are easier to find—the investigation team ascends the mountains for panda population monitoring.
“Collecting animal droppings and bamboo leaves that animals have eaten is all for studying the species in the area,” Zhang Dongling explained. After finding traces left by animals, the team members record the exact location on forms. The collected feces are brought back to the laboratory for simple analysis and sent to a biological company for testing. Based on the results, they can determine the gender of the individual panda that left the feces and the genetic relationships between different individuals. This helps enrich the genetic database of pandas in the area.
Another Task on the Mountain
There is another task when they go up the mountain. The team members retrieve the memory cards from the infrared cameras they installed in the previous phase of monitoring. They analyze the images of giant pandas and associated animals based on their distribution and use the results to produce research papers, which provide theoretical support for wildlife conservation.
Repeated Experiments to Repair Habitat Cracks
In addition to studying the wildlife itself, restoring and improving their habitats is also critically important.
Currently, the Xinying area of the Giant Panda National Park is actively conducting research and restoration work on degraded panda habitats, led by another female “poop collector,” Fu Mingxia.
Data shows that the total area of the Xinying region is 836 square kilometers. According to the results of the Fourth National Giant Panda Survey, by the end of 2013, there were 28 wild pandas active in the region, making it a small population. However, this small population faces a genetic crisis—fragmented habitats act as isolated islands, hindering gene flow between the Daxiangling and Qionglai Mountains. “Through habitat surveys and assessments, we found that the Daxiangling Mountain range, where Xinying is located, is severely affected by human activity, directly impacting genetic exchange between the panda populations within the mountain range and the Qionglai Mountains outside the region.”
Since then, this girl from a northern arid area has always worn a full set of rain gear and spent entire days in the foggy, muddy mountains to research the most suitable habitat conditions for giant pandas under different vegetation distributions.
Finally, the team’s monitoring plots set up in the Mud Mountain corridor revealed a key problem: overgrown artificial forests were squeezing the space for bamboo to grow, and the lack of tall trees meant that pandas lost their natural shelters. After long-term experimentation, the team developed a “striped thinning + tiered planting” solution. This involved thinning out the artificial forests in strips and planting native trees such as Quercus and fir in layers, which revitalized the bamboo and restored the vertical shelter system.
After five years of hard work, she and her team completed nearly 7,000 acres of habitat restoration in the Mud Mountain corridor, replanting over 100,000 native broadleaf trees. Surprisingly, infrared cameras have captured footage of a “mother with cubs” crossing the corridor three times in the last four years, proving that the restored area has become a safe passage for genetic exchange. “I hope that under our protection, the wild giant panda population can gradually recover.”