The first two national giant-panda surveys had little of the scientific or technological edge of the third national survey.
Professor Hu Jinchu, 74, joined the Sichuan part of the first national survey of the giant panda between 1974 and 1977.
He said the national project was originally initiated by late Premier Zhou Enlai.
"When American President Richard Nixon visited China (in 1972), two giant pandas were given to the Americans as a gift from the Chinese," Hu recalled.
"So late Premier Zhou Enlai saw the need to find out the actual number of wild giant pandas in the country.
"But we had none of the modern devices or equipment that they had for the third national survey," Hu recalled.
More than 3,000 people took part in the first field survey in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. Combing through the gullies in the traditional giant-panda habitats, the members documented the number of giant pandas and panda droppings they spotted. Later, it was publicly announced that there were between 1,050 and 1,100 giant pandas living in the wild in China.
Between 1985 and 1988, experts and scholars from both the former Ministry of Forestry and the World Wildlife Fund (now called the Worldwide Fund for Nature outside the United States and Canada) joined forces to conduct the second national survey of giant pandas.
In addition to the actual field work, the experts and scholars also adopted a few methods to calculate the number of wild giant pandas.
According to the joint announcement published in 1989 by the Ministry of Forestry and the WWF, the number of wild giant pandas in China was between 872 and 1,352.
Wang Hongjia - deputy director of the Sichuan provincial team during the third national panda survey, who took part in the second national survey - said: "We didn't have as extensive technical designs as we have had this time."
During the Sichuan part of the second national survey, Wang Hongjia and his colleagues trekked into 132 townships and 11 giant-panda reserves covering 28 counties in the province.
"But we didn't go into the wooded turf of the local forestry industry," Wang recalled. "The people there told us that they'd never encountered a wild giant panda."
(China Daily August 21, 2002)
