Website Lets Surfers Join Panda Expedition

Panda fans can travel along -- virtually -- with a researcher who's now in China seeking to put global positioning system (GPS)-equipped collars on the endangered animals, according to news from the National Science Foundation.

Vanessa Hull, a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University (MSU) is currently in China's Wolong Nature Reserve, located in a snowy and remote mountain region of the Sichuan Province, hoping to put GPS-equipped collars on at least four wild pandas. She plans to post video clips and photos of her quest on MSU's Office of University Relations Website.

Visitors to the site will also be able to email questions about pandas to the research team.

"We are very excited about this new project," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Hull's adviser and a professor of fisheries and wildlife. "It will generate lots of long-awaited important information about panda biology, behavior and interactions with human activities."

By tracking wild pandas with the GPS devices, MSU researchers hope to learn more about which habitats the creatures like best. That information can then be used to better preserve the areas most favorable to the pandas' survival, and to create more protected regions for the animal.

Pandas are both elusive and endangered, with an estimated wild population in China of between 1,600 and 3,000. They're also highly particular in their choice of habitats, preferring areas with lots of bamboo, comfortable slopes, trees strong enough to hold them while napping and just the right temperatures.

Humans, however, pose a great threat to pandas' favorite terrains. The farming and logging practices that support many people's livelihoods has wiped out large swaths of the pandas' preferred habitat. Even ecotourists who travel to China's reserves to view pandas contribute to the problem, as development and commercial activities impinge on the natural environment.

Hull is one of the first researchers to obtain a permit to trap wild pandas so she can equip them with the harmless GPS collars. By tracking the collared pandas, the MSU team will essentially let the pandas speak for themselves about the areas they like the best. That data will supplement a dozen years of panda research by the MSU Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, operated in collaboration with scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Wolong Nature Reserve.

National Science Foundation, "Web Surfers Can Follow Researcher as She Seeks to Collar and Study Pandas in Chinese Reserve." URL: (http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110843)