Came across an interesting article on Fiji Times Online of a topic that is close to my heart, especially this month.
There are countless tragedies from the devastating earthquake in China's Sichuan province last year. Upwards of 80,000 people died in the quake, and hundreds of thousands more continue to battle to put their lives back together.
Then there are the lesser-known victims of the quake -- China's endangered giant pandas.
The quake's epicentre was bang in the middle of the relatively small area of natural habitat China's most famous creatures call home.
Just as its people suffer, Sichuan's famous bamboo-clad mountains still bear the scars of last year's earthquake. Once covered in verdant forests, today the mountains are a stark reminder of the power of one of the world's biggest natural disasters. It's not just the quake's horrific death toll that stands out -- it killed around 100,000 people -- but the sheer size of the area it impacted; towering hillsides crumbled and valley after valley crushed and buried.
"I was on the way to work, when everything started to shake and collapse," said panda keeper Deng Tao.
And panda biologist Huang Yan said: "It was like the mountains were exploding and the land cracked open".
Sanctuary devastated
The earthquake wasn't just a disaster for Sichuan's human habitants.
Close to the epicentre of the quake was China's biggest and most advanced panda research base, at the town of Wolong.
The very mountains that provided sanctuary for Wolong's pandas were suddenly a deadly liability for the animals and the tourists who had come to see them.
The first priority was getting the tourists out of immediate danger and the injured onto military helicopters and evacuated to safety. The quake killed five of the sanctuary's workers and injured several more, but there was little time to grieve, with the centre's 86 pandas trapped in what was left of the reserve.
"When the earthquake happened, I felt so sorry for the poor pandas," Deng Tao said.
"We were so worried and we couldn't get into their enclosures."
At great risk to their own safety, the reserve's workers eventually managed to go back into the destroyed research base to look for the animals.
It was a distressing sight: Dozens of injured and frightened pandas needing medical attention or simple reassurance from their human keepers.
And then saddest of all, one of the animals was discovered dead -- nine-year-old Mao Mao, who'd mothered five of the centre's younger animals.
One of her children was among the 14 babies rescued from the breeding centre.
"All the baby pandas were crouched together when we found them," Deng Tao said. "When we held them, they were all scared. Many of us were crying. They are like our own kids."
It was clear the pandas home had been destroyed and they too would need to be evacuated. Within days a massive operation to send them out of Wolong to other panda reserves began.
New home
Fast forward almost a year, and some of Wolong's baby pandas have grown into toddlers. Since the earthquake they've been kept at Beijing zoo, thousands of kilometres from their mountain homes.
They've been a popular attraction for the zoo, but now a new enclosure's been built for them back in Sichuan, one that's closer to their natural environment.
And a few days later they've arrived in their new home at the Yan'an sanctuary, an hour's drive from Sichuan's capital Chengdu. The Yan'an reserve was second only to Wolong before the earthquake; 70 of the earthquake pandas were brought there, more than doubling the existing population.
Ten new buildings and 20 new enclosures have been built since the earthquake to cope with the extra numbers.
Panda biologist Huang Yan says it's not ideal for the new arrivals, partly because it's almost 1000 metres lower in altitude.
"Our pandas get really hot here in summer," he said.
"We've had to install air-conditioners in the panda enclosures to keep them cool."
Captive breeding
Yan'an is carrying on what was perhaps the Wolong reserve's most important job -- its captive breeding program. And that's never more been important.
It's estimated before the earthquake there were only about 1600 pandas left in the wild, and the earthquake couldn't have come at a worse place for the wild panda population.
No one knows how many were killed during the quake itself, but previous earthquakes seriously disrupted the growing cycle of the bamboo that is their sole source of food. Some Chinese experts have estimated the earthquake could end up claiming the lives up to two thirds of the remaining wild population, seriously threatening an already endangered species.
Most dishearteningly of all, four of Wolong's pandas were just a couple of weeks away from being released into the wild when the quake struck, with more to follow.
Huang Yan says that project is now postponed.
"The impact of the earthquake is quite big," he said. "In about two years the four pandas, or maybe two of them, we can release into the wild."
Adding to that problem, he says the earthquake was a serious setback to the captive breeding program.
"Some pandas had abortions because of the earthquake," he said. "As for any psychological problems we are not clear yet. We need to see if they can breed normally and behave normally this year and do more research on it."
Green shoots
But there are signs of hope Yan'an, with 13 babies in the new reserve were all conceived in Wolong before the earthquake, and born in Yan'an after it.
They're the green shoots of the next generation of Sichuan's pandas, a large part of the key to ensuring the survival of the species.
"It's really not easy to have the baby pandas here, but they gave us a hope," Huang Yan said. "It took a huge effort to transfer them here, but they were delivered smoothly and now they're growing up. I think the future for them will be really beautiful."
As the babies get bigger, they're going to need more room ... and Yan'an is already full up.
Damage and rebuilding
The race is on to rebuild Wolong as quickly as possible so some of the young pandas can be prepared for release into the wild.
But when NewsHour was invited to go up to the destroyed sanctuary and see the rebuilding, we ran into trouble.
While the people who run the centre had invited us to come and see it, we were told we wouldn't get through military checkpoints on the way without clearance from the local government.
When we went to ask for clearance, we got the impression we were not welcome in the region. After more argument and an assurance that we were only in Sichuan to film a story about pandas, we were finally given clearance to go.
On our way up to Wolong, we passed through the earthquake's epicentre and saw why officials could have been nervous about out visit. Though much rebuilding work had been done, the epicentre mostly looked as though the quake happened yesterday.
When we turned off the highway and into the valley leading up Wolong, there was even more devastation.
A three-hour drive before the earthquake now took us seven hours, and when we got there, it was a forlorn, sad sight. Six brothers and sisters of the Beijing zoo pandas, now living in Yan'an, remain and unlike their brethren, they've been in Wolong since the earthquake.
"This was once China's biggest Panda reserves and it's really quite sad to see these pandas who are used to a relative amount of freedom confined to a small cage of just a few square metres," panda keeper Deng Tao said.
"I feel so bad, looking at these pandas. They're like my kids, and it's really sad to see them living in such a tiny place."
The destroyed sanctuary has become an eerie, grim echo of a place that used to bring pleasure to so many people, and so much hope to the pandas as a species.
With human needs still so great, pandas are a second priority. Virtually no rebuilding had taken place and a reopening of the reserve seemed a long way off. But the staff lives in hope and are more determined than ever that their work here helps rescue the species.
"We won't stop working on that," Deng Tao said.
"We hope one day, we can get them all back into nature. It will be good for them.
It would be nice to think that when Sichuan's hills are once again covered in green, lush bamboo forests, there will be a healthy population of pandas living there too.
