All text and images are from the publication Giant Pandas in the Wild: Saving an Endangered Species. ©2002 Aperture Foundation Inc.
As the snowy trail zigzagged into the forest, I saw tracks made by a shrew; signs of a takin, an oxlike creature; and, finally, panda feces and a few footprints in the snow. That evening in camp, I wrote in my notebook: “My dream has come true.” It was 1985 and I was 19 years old, in my last year of undergraduate study in biology at Peking University. In this reserve in the Qinling Mountains of southwestern China, I was starting what was to become my life’s work: the study of pandas in the wild.
