Amber and Conner at Hetaoping!

Returning to Gengda for the third time has been quite the whirlwind. Between a 40+ travel time across the world which included and overnight stay in a hotel in Seattle, and an airline losing my bag, nothing seemed to be working out right. However, upon arrival to China, things began to be much easier. I met up with Connor and Amber, our two new reintroduction interns without a hitch, and we were treated to a wonderful 10 dish lunch at Shenshuping base by the head of the research department, Mr. Qiu the moment we got into Gengda. After a day of the typical intro to China and registration at the local police station, we settled into our apartments.

Interns in front of the famous statue at Hetaoping.

The week since arriving has been full of making sure everything is properly setup for the next 3 months of reintroduction data collection. This includes taking stock of all our equipment and ensuring that it is still properly working, as well with setting up our camera traps in all the enclosures we will be conducting trials in. Since I left Gengda last October, two of the bears we worked with, Ba Xi and Ying Xue have been successfully released into the wild, which is very exciting news.

Tong Tong at Gengda (he’s not in the reintroduction studies but he sure is handsome!)

Additionally, two of the bears we worked with in Hetaoping, Xiao Hetao and Qin Xin, have moved to the next stage of their reintroduction training, Tiantaishan. This means we get to collect data on them in an entirely new, and much larger, location. 4 new pairs of reintroduction candidates have taken their place at Hetaoping, meaning there are a lot of bears to study! Connor and Amber will be kept very busy over the next coming months. I have high hopes for both of the new interns. They seem very intelligent and motivated towards the research we conduct here in China.

Cui Cui chilling at Gengda

As for my bag, with the help of our colleague Meng Meng, we were finally able to locate it in Beijing and get it sent to Chengdu, where I finally picked it up after over a week of wearing the same clothes. Fortunately for me, my comfort food, which includes tortillas, queso, refried beans, and chili, were unharmed.

My bag finally showed up after 5 days of wearing the same clothes!

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Zack, our reintroduction field lead, will be in Gengda until February 15th. Along with Amber and Conner, our new reintroduction interns, they get to conduct some pretty amazing novel research on both adult and young panda bears. The results from this work will assist the CCRCGP in identifying reintroduction bears, suitable for release into the wild.