Unseen heroes of the bamboo forests: the protectors of China's giant pandas

Unexpected discoveries

In addition to carefully monitoring and tracking the conditions of the pandas in the mountains, the Yingjing county patrol station team occasionally makes exciting discoveries.

Song Xinqiang, a young member of the station who specializes in biodiversity, found a curious species of flowering plant belonging to the genus Impatiens (Balsaminaceae) while patrolling Daxiangling with his team three years ago.

Impatiens are common in Sichuan. Many senior Sichuan women have fond childhood memories of mashing the flower petals and painting their nails red with their juice.

This new species was significantly different from the well-known Impatiens of the region. The team took photos and sent them to plant taxonomists for identification.

The station's research team collected a massive specimen sample, reviewed the literature and conducted morphological characteristics research from 2021 to 2022 to identify the species accurately and determine its classification.

They partnered with Sichuan University, China West Normal University and other scientific research units to conduct phylogenetic analysis and electron microscopic observation of the pollen morphology. Finally, they were able to confirm that they had found a brand-new species. They named it Impatiens yingjingensis (Balsaminaceae) in honor of where it was found.

On June 6, 2024, Song's discovery was published in PhytoKeys, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal on taxonomy, phylogeny, biogeography and the evolution of plants.

There are many fruits to the patroller's labors in the mountains of Daxiangling. None are more important than their contribution to panda history through conservation efforts.

The giant panda has long been well-known in China, but the West only learned about it in 1869 thanks to a French missionary in Ya'an.

Jean Pierre Armand David (1826-1900) was born in Espelette, France. He started working at the Dengchigou Catholic Church in Baoxing, a mountainous county in Sichuan, in March 1869.

Soon afterward, he was invited to tea at a local hunter's home. That's where he first saw the skin of a giant panda. Suspecting it to be a new animal species, he had the hunter capture a live panda, made a specimen and mailed it to Henri Milne Edwards, a zoologist from the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris. In 1870, Edwards published a paper declaring the panda to be a new species.

The specimen, which is still kept at the national museum, captured the attention of the West. Since then, the unique image of the panda has been associated with Chinese culture.

Thanks to China's protection efforts, the International Union for Conservation of Nature downgraded the giant panda's status from "endangered" to "vulnerable "in 2016.

In 2021, China established the Giant Panda National Park. The conservation area spans 27,000 kilometers and covers parts of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. Forty-seven percent of Yingjing county resides in the park, providing Fu, Song and Kang with the gift of overseeing the giant panda's enduring legacy.