Pandering to a wild style of life

He Liwen has devoted more than two decades to the protection of flora and fauna at a nature reserve in Northwest China, where many pandas live.

On June 9, He Liwen was pleased to receive an unusual delivery. Some people who had found two small bears that somehow got separated from their mother, after buying them some milk, brought them to the administration office of the nearby Baishuijiang Nature Reserve in Northwest China's Gansu province.

"It means people's awareness to protect wild animals has improved," says He, director of the giant panda management office at the reserve.

Having worked as a protector of wild animals, especially pandas, for 24 years, He has devoted himself to the cause and witnessed the changes in wild animal protection and that of the reserve's ecological environment.

The most recent national wild panda survey, which was published in 2015, shows there are 1,864 wild pandas nationwide, which are distributed throughout Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces－110 of which live in the Baishuijiang reserve.

According to He, although the International Union for Conservation of Nature reported that the giant panda population had improved enough for the endangered species label to be downgraded to "vulnerable" in 2016, giant pandas are still threatened as their habitat is very fragmented.