Camp Panda: "Change Comes"

That might prove good for the pandas, but the team members weren’t particularly comfortable in the heavy, hot panda suits. It was hard to see things clearly, and their range of motion was severely hampered by the cumbersome costumes.

That might prove good for the pandas, but the team members weren’t particularly comfortable in the heavy, hot panda suits. It was hard to see things clearly, and their range of motion was severely hampered by the cumbersome costumes.

“The idea,” explains Huang Yan, “is not to make the cub think a human in a panda suit is a panda. It’s just to camouflage the human appearance so the cub does not get acclimated to humans.”

“The idea,” explains Huang Yan, “is not to make the cub think a human in a panda suit is a panda. It’s just to camouflage the human appearance so the cub does not get acclimated to humans.”

For a panda to survive in the wild, a panda must be wild—and that can’t happen if it’s been cuddled and coddled and cared for by humans before it’s released.

Yet it will take two years of “wilderness training” in the newly developed reintroduction program before a panda cub is set free, and some human interaction is unavoidable.

But the costuming was only step one of several other strategic changes that Zhang Hemin and Huang Yan’s team would make.

Instead, it encourages and reinforces the cubs’ natural behaviors in seeking out their own food, water, and shelter. Second, it encourages a healthy fear of humans—discouraging the cubs from wandering onto farms and being shot by farmers protecting their livelihoods.

Step three, another significant realization, concerned the timing of the release. “It was determined that a cub should be released when it’s about two years of age,” says Suzanne Braden, of Pandas International.

During this period of redesign, researchers faced an additional and even bigger setback.

In 2008, a horrific, devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China, left tens of thousands of people dead, millions homeless, thousands of buildings destroyed, and untold damage to natural lands and habitats—an epic disaster that also left behind the destruction of the Wolong Panda Research Center.

In 2008, a horrific, devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China, left tens of thousands of people dead, millions homeless, thousands of buildings destroyed, and untold damage to natural lands and habitats—an epic disaster that also left behind the destruction of the Wolong Panda Research Center.

In 2008, a horrific, devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China, left tens of thousands of people dead, millions homeless, thousands of buildings destroyed, and untold damage to natural lands and habitats—an epic disaster that also left behind the destruction of the Wolong Panda Research Center.

Of all the reintroductions of all the different species that are undertaken, only a small percentage currently have elaborate training-to-be-wild programs.

But there are many reintroduction efforts that don’t do hard releases yet do employ some type of acclimation process, where the species is slowly transitioned back into the wild—using a staged, or “soft,” release.