In the mountains of Daxiangling in Ya'an, Sichuan province, a dedicated group of youths traverses dense bamboo forests, carefully monitoring the flora and fauna. They are often not seen or heard from for weeks at a time.

They are the 27 members of the Yingjing county patrol station of the Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan. With an average age of around 30, all the station's patrollers are college graduates.

"We patrol the rolling mountains where giant pandas reside without electricity or signal. So we can be disconnected," said Fu Mingxia, deputy chief of the station.

Wild pandas survive solely in six mountain ranges within Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. Fu and the other station members patrol Daxiangling, which boasts the Daxiangling Giant Panda Wilderness and Reintroduction Research Base, the world's largest giant panda reintroduction training center.

The team's routine is to collect bamboo leaves and soil samples to check for pests and deterioration. They are looking for signs that the leaves are unsuitable for pandas to eat and that the soil is not ideal for growing bamboo.

They also monitor recordings from the infrared cameras installed in the mountains, gather information about giant pandas and collect panda droppings.

Scientists use the droppings to identify the sex of the pandas, which is how they determine the number of males and females in an area and if a captive male or female panda needs to be released to expand the population, Fu said.

"We look for images of pandas in the cameras to see if they are all right. If they are not, we inform rescue workers," Fu said.

On a typical day, they head for the mountains at 8 am and don't return until night. They keep records of what the cameras capture and any other observations they make about the mountains.

Spring is the giant panda mating season, and their behavior changes during the winter to survive the harsher weather. During these periods, the patrol sometimes stays in the mountains for weeks without returning home. "We have more to observe," Fu said.

Her dedication has not gone unnoticed. Fu was named the Most Beautiful Patroller in 2019, just two years after starting the job. Every year, the Sichuan provincial forestry and grassland bureau and an environmental public welfare foundation award the title to honor grassroots patrollers who make exceptional contributions to Sichuan's ecological environment.

China's latest panda census — released in 2015 — showed that 22 of the 33 groups of wild pandas found in the census faced the danger of extinction.

By the end of last year, China was home to 728 captive pandas and 1,900 wild pandas, indicating that the captive panda population is now self-sustaining.

Releasing captive pandas is essential for growing the wild panda population, according to Zhang Hemin, chief expert of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Sichuan.

Twelve captive pandas have been released into the wild in China since 2003 to enlarge the wild panda population. Ten are still alive, according to Wu Daifu, an expert in reintroducing captive pandas into the wild at the center.

One of the 12 released pandas is in Daxiangling, where Fu and her colleagues patrol.

Taking up the glove

Working in the dense mountain bamboo forests poses challenges and dangers. Sometimes, navigation is impossible. "We need to carve out a path," said Kang Jun, a 23-year-old patroller at the Yingjing county patrol station.

To ensure that patrollers are up to the task, they must pass a physical fitness and survival knowledge test. Kang signed up for the test in March last year when the station enrolled six patrollers. More than 120 others joined him.

During one portion of the test, patrollers are required to finish walking along a designated route within three hours. It took Kang, the native son of a rural area in Yingjing, only 56 minutes to reach the finish line.

He managed to earn the third-highest score among the test-takers, making him the youngest patroller at his station.

"I grew up in the mountains, so I get along with nature," Kang said.

Despite the hardships and dangers associated with being a patroller, Kang considers himself lucky to have the job. He likes being close to nature and taking in the free atmosphere of the forests.

Before each trip to the mountains, Kang makes complete preparations. In addition to a pair of rubber shoes, rain boots, two sets of patrol suits and a first-aid kit, Kang carries a satellite phone, a telescope and GPS navigation equipment.

According to Kang, carrying a heavy bag with all the equipment is bearable when the weather is fine, but the forests are tricky on rainy days. Patrollers can easily slip and get hurt.

Once, while approaching a river valley surrounded by cliffs, Kang and an older colleague came across several boars. With no way to escape, the duo had to climb trees and hope the beasts didn't stick around.

Not all of Kang's experiences have been so harrowing. He has witnessed a Chinese serow sleeping soundly in front of an infrared camera and a black-necked crane standing quietly to rest.

On one foggy day, Kang heard flapping wings and bird calls overhead. To his pleasant surprise, the fog soon dispersed, revealing a flock of majestic black-necked cranes hovering in the sky.

"I was so excited and kept taking photos," Kang said.

In addition to the wild animals in the mountains, Kang and his colleagues often come across wild vegetables and eggs.

They have the luxury of feasting on fresh wild vegetables, much to the envy of their neighbors back home who eat artificially grown vegetables.

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.