China hopes for green shoots of panda revival in wild

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China is planning its first panda census in a decade and expects to resume the release of captive animals to their natural habitat amid hopes that conservation efforts have boosted the wild population.

Chinese authorities have carried out four censuses of the wild panda population, with the latest in 2011-14 showing a population of 1,864, compared with about 1,100 in the 1980s. The next census, delayed because of the pandemic, is expected to be carried out next year.

Wang Xiaojun, a senior engineer at the Sichuan Academy of the Giant Panda, said he expected the next census to show an increase in the population. “Based on our investigations in a similar area, we found the probability of encountering pandas increased,” he said.

Chinese authorities returned 12 pandas to their natural habitat between 2003 and 2018 but put the programme on hold “because of Covid and other reasons”, said Wu Daifu, a rewilding expert at the Hetaoping Base in south-western Sichuan province, the heart of China’s panda conservation efforts.

Two pandas may be released this year, with another three possibly set for next year, Wu said during an official tour of the base.

The giant panda emerged in the 20th century as a national symbol of China. In recent decades, it has become a focal point of tourism and large-scale conservation efforts in the country’s mountainous western regions.

Prospects for the species, well known for its low reproductive rates, have improved in recent years. In 2016, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature removed it from a list of endangered species, downgrading the panda’s status to vulnerable, a shift echoed by Chinese authorities in 2021.

Chinese authorities in 2021 established a vast Giant Panda National Park, which spans several provinces, and the central government last year invested Rmb500mn ($69mn) in the park in Sichuan.

Wu said further infrastructure investments were expected. “In the last 10 or 20 years, we have been gathering experience,” he said, adding it was “increasingly possible to do batch releases” into the wild. Other countries have developed successful rewilding programmes for animals ranging from elks to wild boars.

The animals have featured for decades in diplomacy, with Li Qiang, the premier and China’s second-highest official, offering Australia two new pandas on a visit last week.

There were 728 pandas in captivity globally last year, of which 46 were newly conceived. Leases under which pandas are exchanged — the modern norm for panda diplomacy — typically mean that any cub born overseas remains the property of China and is returned to the mainland at a young age.

Panda reproduction is partly aided by in vitro fertilisation, but the majority of births are natural, experts said. The World Wide Fund for Nature, which uses an image of a panda in its logo, said in a statement that there was a “promising trend” in the wild population of pandas and that rewilding could help counter the risk of inbreeding.

“After decades of work, it is clear that the future of pandas and their forest home depends on even greater efforts, especially with the increasing impact of climate change,” a spokesperson said.

High in the mountains of Sichuan, which borders Tibet, rangers at the Sichuan Daxiangling Giant Panda Wilderness and Reintroduction Research Base have placed cameras in forests to try to track the animals.

Of the mostly female pandas released, an estimated 10 have survived, based on tracking from collars that usually disintegrate after 18 months. “I firmly believe they have offspring,” said Wu. “But there is no evidence of that yet.”