Walking the wild side

Kathy MacKinnon, head of the commission, speaks highly of the rangers' work, saying that they are "critical to our global conservation efforts, helping to stem biodiversity loss and protect the important ecosystems that serve as natural solutions to climate change and other global challenges".

Shi realizes that through protecting endangered animals, like giant pandas and snow leopards, the rich biodiversity of the environment can also be maintained, which is a win-win situation.

After graduation from Sichuan Forestry School (now Sichuan Agricultural University) in 1992, Shi became a forest guardian at the Wolong National Nature Reserve. He worked on the third and fourth national panda surveys.

Established in 1963, Wolong is the country's earliest panda reserve. It experienced serious human-animal conflict, such as illegal logging and hunting before the 1990s. In 1978, an observation tent, claimed to be the country's first field camp to study wild giant pandas, was built on a steep forested slope in the reserve.

In the early 1980s, the government cooperated with the World Wide Fund for Nature to establish the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda to save the endangered animal.

In the eyes of Zhang Hemin, the center's founder and former deputy director, the Shi realizes that through protecting endangered animals, like giant pandas and snow leopards, the rich biodiversity of the environment can also be maintained, which is a win-win situation.

After graduation from Sichuan Forestry School (now Sichuan Agricultural University) in 1992, Shi became a forest guardian at the Wolong National Nature Reserve. He worked on the third and fourth national panda surveys.

Established in 1963, Wolong is the country's earliest panda reserve. It experienced serious human-animal conflict, such as illegal logging and hunting before the 1990s. In 1978, an observation tent, claimed to be the country's first field camp to study wild giant pandas, was built on a steep forested slope in the reserve.

In the early 1980s, the government cooperated with the World Wide Fund for Nature to establish the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda to save the endangered animal.

In the eyes of Zhang Hemin, the center's founder and former deputy director, the center confirms that China views the scientific protection and research of giant pandas from a global perspective.

Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the ancestor of the giant panda is the Ailurarctos that lived about 8 million years ago. Treated as a national treasure, giant pandas are one of the flagship species to be protected by the Wolong rangers.