by Meg | Sep 7, 2017 | PDXWildlife
It has been quite a month in Gengda so far! Between working with reintroduction candidates in both Hetaoping and Tiantaishan, we are kept very busy. In each of the reintroduction enclosures, we have been placing four camera traps in a circle around a certain...
by Meg | Sep 5, 2017 | Internship, Panda |
Ni Hao! My name is Lu Lu and I’ve recently celebrated my third birthday here at Bifengxia! The bamboo I eat still towers over my small frame but my jaws are just as powerful as any adult bear here. You’ll find me in Baixiongping 7, the most beautiful area of the base...
by Meg | Sep 5, 2017 | Science |
PDXWildlife collects over 500 lbs. of male giant panda feces each year in order to measure changes in testosterone and cortisol. This requires an ample amount of supplies including trash bags, collection bags, gloves, markers, two large chest freezers, and a very...
by Meg | Sep 3, 2017 | Panda |
At the center of the Bifengxia panda base is the highly popular kindergarten. Here, you will find pens for young cubs and the nursery, where the vet staff is kept busy with newborns. The 2016 cub season was very active, and according to Jerome Pouille’s website-...
by Meg | Sep 2, 2017 | Panda, Science
With a solid week of heavy rain, the temperature dropped from the low 90’s and has hovered around the ideal mid 70’s here at Bifengxia. The temperature change also gave way to each intern hitting the benchmark 90% inter-observer reliability for their...
by Meg | Aug 31, 2017 | Internship, Science |
Katie, Hallie and I are concluding our second week in China; and the differences from life in the western world are vast and fascinating. With very limited language skills, the three of us have navigated the large City of Chengdu rather successfully. We found our way...
by Meg | Aug 30, 2017 | Science
An interesting aspect of conducting year-round research at Bifengxia is that we get to observe panda behaviors every season, which allows us to detect seasonal changes. As this is the first time that I have traveled here in the fall, I’ve started noticing a...
by Meg | Aug 26, 2017 | Science
Our maternal care studies begin once the cubs reach one month in age. Even though we sit outside of the outer doors and only have a single person conduct the trial, this ensures that we avoid causing any undue stress from our presence. However, with an extremely busy...
by Meg | Aug 24, 2017 | PDXWildlife, Science |
With some incredibly humid and hot weather over the last few days, we welcomed Katie, Katelin, & Hallie to our Bifengxia panda research program. Even though our sweaty handshakes would set the pace for the next few days, each of the interns have been hitting the...
by Meg | Aug 21, 2017 | Internship |
My adventure began with a 13 hour nonstop flight from Chicago O’Hare Airport to Beijing. I claimed my bag, went through customs and hurried to catch my flight to Chengdu only to find there was a delay. After 8 hours of waiting and trying to sleep on the...
