Liziping Nature Reserve is a protected area in Sichuan Province, China, used for panda rewilding and release programs.
Liziping Nature Reserve forms part of the in-situ conservation landscape for wild giant pandas, anchored by nature reserves and protected corridors within the broader panda habitat network.
How this page is organized
Start with the pandas, then move outward into the surrounding archive
This page gathers the residents linked to Liziping Nature Reserve, the key moments recorded here, nearby institutions, and the articles that add context.
Xue Xue (雪雪, sb850) was found dead in the Dahongshan area of Liziping Reserve, only 42 days after her release. Post-mortem analysis suggested a pathogenic bacterial infection as the likely cause — the first rewilded panda to die from disease rather than physical trauma.
Xue Xue (雪雪, sb850), the fourth captive-born panda released to the wild, walked out of her transport cage at Liziping Nature Reserve. She weighed 53.4 kg and had completed two years of mother-rearing rewilding training under Si Xue.
Zhang Xiang (张想, sb826), the first captive-born female panda raised through mother-rearing rewilding training, was released into Liziping Nature Reserve in Shimian County. This marked the first successful release of a female captive-born panda into the wild, following the earlier release of Tao Tao in 2012.
The Ultimate Panda Documentary Guide: 50+ Films Every Panda Lover Needs to Watch
A curated global guide to over 50 panda documentaries spanning seven decades, seven thematic categories, and ten countries — from Pan Wenshi's raw Qinling field recordings in the 1990s to the 2024 Korean theatrical release Goodbye, Grandpa. Every film is verified, reviewed, and linked to the real pandas, keepers, and breeding centers behind the footage.
Rewilding Pandas: From Captivity Back to the Deep Forest
The ultimate goal of panda conservation is not more pandas in cages — it is more pandas in forests. Since 2006, China has been training captive-born pandas for release into the wild through a program that requires keepers to wear panda suits, mothers to teach cubs survival skills without human contact, and released pandas to navigate a world their ancestors knew but they have never seen. This is the story of the rewilding program — its heartbreaking early failures, its hard-won successes, and the panda mothers and cubs who are slowly learning to be wild again.
Where Do Wild Pandas Live? The Complete Panda Habitat Guide
Wild pandas live in six mountain ranges across three provinces of southwestern China — Minshan, Qionglai, Qinling, Liangshan, Daxiangling, and Xiaoxiangling — each with its own bamboo palette, elevation band, and conservation pressures. This guide maps the full habitat system: how elevation, bamboo species, and climate make a patch habitable, the fragmentation reality of 33 isolated subpopulations, and the corridor network under the Giant Panda National Park that is reconnecting them. Name the range, and you begin to know the habitat.
