A GIANT panda museum in Hongya County, Southwest China’s Sichuan Province will offer visitors an immersive experience by integrating cutting-edge technologies with pandas’ natural habitat, and help raise awareness of the protection of pandas and the environment.

The Giant Panda National Park Wawushan Giant Panda Museum has completed its equipment adjustment and is expected to open to the public soon. With cutting-edge technologies such as autostereoscopy and augmented reality, the museum provides an interactive experience for museum-goers, who will have an immersive experience of the natural habitat where pandas live and learn about pandas’ evolution and their living habits.

Adhering to the core ideas of education, research and science promotion, the museum is expected to arouse people’s awareness of the protection of giant pandas and the natural environment, as well as to serve as a major venue to carry out education and provide ecological experience services. The museum tells of the mysteries of the panda species and the ecological stories of the Giant Panda National Park Wawushan area.

The planning of the museum exhibition is also different from usual, with the entertainment and science promotions having been combined. With a variety of multimedia interactive devices such as autostereoscopy, water screen projection and an LED infrared sensor system combined with representative plants in Wawushan Mountain, the museum shows the environment and jungle habitat in an artistic form.

The museum, with an area of 2,555.34 square meters, including its exhibition hall, experience hall, lecture hall and other facilities, is located at the foot of Wawushan Mountain, the national forest park and scenic spot.

Among the five national parks of China’s national park system officially established Oct. 12, 2021, the Giant Panda National Park is the only one named after a single species. The park, covering 27,134 square kilometers across Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, is a concentrated distribution area and main breeding habitat for wild pandas.

Information from the park’s website show the park, launched as a national pilot project in January 2017, is integrating more than 80 natural reserves in 30 counties of the three provinces. The latest statistics show that 1,631 wild giant pandas are living in the national park, accounting for 87.5% of the population of wild pandas nationwide.

The park is also home to more than 8,000 types of wildlife, such as snub-nosed monkeys and scarlet ibis, making it a nationally or possibly globally significant place for the protection of an ecological environment.

To better protect the wildlife in the park, the Giant Panda National Park Administration has invested 4.7 billion yuan (US$660 million) in infrastructure construction, the restoration of the ecological corridors and the protection of crucial habitats, said Xiang Kewen, director of the administration.

Xiang added that more than 5,000 infrared cameras have been installed in the national park, and the images they have recorded have provided large amounts of firsthand materials for scientific research.

According to Duan Zhaogang, director of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, the population of giant pandas living in their native habitat in China has grown to 1,864 from 1,114 in the 1980s, with the area of protected panda habitats increasing significantly.

(Global Times, China Daily)