Panda Mountain is promoting cultural preservation and economic self-sufficiency for Wolong’s indigenous people, helping Wolong’s residents improve their livelihoods by becoming stewards of the protected areas in which they live.

The indigenous people of the Wolong region have rich cultural traditions and many are of Tibetan heritage. The reserve is part of Aba, an autonomous Tibetan and Qiang prefecture within Sichuan Province. The reserve is sparsely populated, with 500 Wolong personnel and a total of 4,500 subsistence farmers. Most people live along the main river valley and are generally concentrated in Genda and Wolong townships. In Wolong Township, 85% of the residents are ethnic Tibetans.

Over the last 20 years, Wolong’s population has nearly doubled. At first, this increase in population degraded Panda habitat as people competed with for land and forest resources.

In response to the severe flooding in the Yangtze watershed in the summer of 1998, the Central Government instituted a number of forest conservation programs, (grain to green – returning cultivated areas into forest lands) encouraging indigenous residents to take an active role in taking care of the land. With financial incentives from the government, many indigenous residents were able to adopt this new role of stewardship.

Looking to the future, one of Panda Mountain’s goals is to improve the standard of living and education for Wolong’s indigenous people through the development of ecologically sustainable livelihoods. In particular, Panda Mountain intends to develop a model conservation economy at Wolong, where indigenous people can shift from subsistence farming, the growing of commodity crops like cabbage, can be compensated to restore panda habitat and become stewards of the protected areas in which they live.

Panda Mountain also works to promote awareness of Wolong residents and visitors, as well as an international conservation constituency on the importance to:

• conserve natural resources and preserve wildlife habitat
• preserve the culture and communities of indigenous peoples.