The Wanglang National Nature Reserve, located in the heart of the Minshan Mountain System in northern Sichuan, is part of the Giant Panda National Park. According to the data of the Fourth National Giant Panda Survey, Pingwu County, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, has 335 wild giant pandas, which is the county with the largest number of wild giant pandas in the country.
As one of the first giant panda reserves established in China in 1965, Wang Lang Nature Reserve has extensively carried out scientific research and international cooperation in the past few decades, and carried out a large number of explorations and successful practices around the protection of giant pandas and their habitats.
In 2016, with the implementation of the long-term research partner Peking University School of Life Sciences team in the Sanjiangyuan Snow Leopard Project and the giant panda habitat large carnivores survey. The managers of the Wang Lang Conservation Area began to think: "In the past few decades, our research and research areas have mainly focused on forest ecology and giant pandas and their associated animals, and according to long-term survey data, the population of large carnivores in the Wang Lang area has declined sharply or even been missing... There is no forest, so are there any large predators such as snow leopards in the high-altitude areas that have rarely been covered by previous surveys above the forest line? ”。 With doubts and expectations, the "Special Survey of Alpine Animals" in Wang Lang Conservation Area was officially launched this year. After a two-year field survey by the reserve and Wang Dajun's team from the College of Life Sciences of Peking University, new species such as desert cats, shrews and stone martens were recorded. But the target species, the snow leopard, has disappeared.
Image Wang Lang | Hidden Snow Chicken
@Image Wang Lang | Hidden snow chicken
@Image Wang Lang | Snow quail
@Image Wang Lang | Rock sheep
@Image Wang Lang | Red Fox poses
@Image Wang Lang | red fox
@Image Wang Lang | rub
@Image Wang Lang | Stone mink
@Image Wang Lang | Green-tailed rainbow pheasant
@Image Wang Lang | Visits
@Image Wang Lang | The wind and snow rise
@Image Wang Lang | Winter solstice
@Image Wang Lang | homeland
@Image Wang Lang | strength
@Image Wang Lang | Stand
@Image Wang Lang | body and shadow
@Image Wang Lang | Two sides of the mountain
@Image Wang Lang | Food in the snow
@Image Wang Lang | Horn shadow
@Image Wang Lang | Lie still
@Image Wang Lang | stare
@Image Wang Lang | footprints
@Image Wang Lang | Ben
@Image Wang Lang | snow leopard
@Image Wang Lang | Alpine animal survey team member
@Image Wang Lang | Luo Chunping tests the camera angle
@Image Wang Lang | Walk on the ridge of the misty mountain
@Image Wang Lang | Bare Rock Zone
@Image Wang Lang | Broad
@Image Wang Lang | Old with new
@Image Wang Lang | Snow Leopard Commando
"Is it blind optimism or is the investigation too short and the area is not large enough?" Based on the data analysis obtained from the survey and long-term field experience, Luo Chunping, the project leader, believes that it should be the latter, and at the same time calls for the project not to give up! With this insistence, the 2018 Alpine Fauna Survey was officially included in the routine monitoring of protected areas.
Snow leopard surveys are notoriously difficult – in alpine areas above 4,000 meters above sea level, fine flowing rock beaches and steep bare rocks are the norm. It all depends on people climbing up step by step to place cameras, and an investigation route is often twenty or thirty kilometers. Put it up and climb it once, and take it back and climb it again. Each camera point needs to go back and forth at least twice a year. The survey area covers four ditches and a total of more than 20 cameras, and the workload can be imagined. In 2020, the team set up 14 cameras at an altitude of 4100-4300 meters, about 20 square kilometers.
In June 2021, the figure of the wolf appeared for the first time, and in September 5 infrared cameras finally had the figure of the snow leopard! And after spot comparison, there are at least 2 or more snow leopards distributed in the area. "Precious", "rarer than giant pandas"... Many local people in Pingwu County described the discovery as such. In fact, the distribution and number of snow leopards in the world far exceed that of giant pandas, but in such a county where the number of wild giant pandas is the first, the "Qingyang Leopard" (the local people call the rock sheep as the Green Sheep, and the snow leopard eats the rock sheep, so it is called the Qingyang Leopard) reappears, which is really precious and exciting! In fact, the entire Minshan mountain system has not been monitored since the 1980s and 1990s. The collection of Wang Lang's images is also the first time that the distribution information and image data of snow leopards have been collected in the core area of central Minshan Mountain. It was confirmed that snow leopards were also distributed east of the Min River, and the national snow leopard distribution map pushed a little further east.
In the past four years, the investigators have a new force, from fear of heights and legs shaking and holding stones and not letting go, growing into "gecko warriors" on the blade ridge; how many days in four years have passed through the four seasons, the fierce wind has cut the face, the ice and snow are bone-deep, and the bone-deep memory of ramming in the deep snow has been exchanged for the honor of "Wang Lang Snow Leopard Commando"! If you want to summarize the snow leopard survey in the Wang Lang Reserve in the shortest words, it must be "persistence"! As the investigation team member Li Xinrui wrote: Wang Lang recorded the snow leopard, the possibility of theory does not explain anything, the people of the earth know the value of persistence, but there is no harvest for several years, everyone will doubt and mutter, when the real see the image of the snow leopard, the most thankful behind the joy is - persistence! Patrol most of the time is to keep walking, only the time span is elongated, the kindness of the creatures here can be felt by them, the previous pandas, this year's wolves and snow leopards, perhaps, are the need to "insist" on the sincerity to achieve. ”
Source: Wang Lang Nature Reserve
Producer: New Governor of the Times New Media Center