Original subtitles

A giant panda is carried up into the mountains, like an emperor.

Since 2003, nine pandas raised in the Wulong Panda

Center have taken this journey to be released.

Even with teams of committed rangers and researchers and

radio collars to track them, the released pandas have often

struggled or even died.

A trickle of information back tells of violence and hardship.

Six mountain rangers draped in bamboo that's nine feet tall and impenetrable.

Over a vast area, hidden, scattered, are only 2,000 wild pandas, all there are.

Filming them was thought futile. Even just finding one is almost impossible.

Giant pandas are bears, relatives of grizzlies, black and polar bears.

But surprisingly, pandas don't hibernate. Even though the

temperature can drop to 30 degrees below freezing, they have

to keep feeding.

Bamboo provides only just enough energy, but

it's almost all they eat, for 14 hours a day.

To help it down, they roll the leaves into a sausage, with

the help of a boneless pad from the wrist, the panda's

unique thumb.

Males start to search for females in spring.

Courtship, mating, and raising cubs in the wild is

mysterious, barely seen before and never filmed.

Wild pandas can be dangerous, with huge claws powered by

muscular front legs. Many faces are scarred by old battle

wounds.

The pandas here in the mountains are totally wild. None

have been released or have radio collars here. That makes it

harder, but it is the best chance to understand truly wild pandas.

In south-central China are around 40 reserves.

They stretch across 300 miles of mountains.

The cubs' story starts at the Wulong Panda Center.

For the pandas growing up here, it's a five-star

hotel, compared to living in the mountains above.

There's the all-you-can-eat dining, and the kindergarten.

The best part is hanging out with friends and

family. Giant pandas in the wild are solitary, but in

captivity they are social. It's not known why. Maybe

generations of living with people, or a quirk of

evolution perhaps, but they are natural clowns.

Ah, this is the life. It's exhausting.

Looking after 40 or so pandas in Wulong are 85 staff, with

59 enclosures, a research lab, and a panda hospital. It's

almost impossible to breed pandas. Decades of matchmaking in

zoos failed. Artificial insemination was the breakthrough.

Our mother-to-be is pregnant, five months in, and about

due. Head keeper Wu Daifu is feeling the pressure.

The camera's ready to capture a rare moment.

This cub is special, chosen for the wild.

Like all bears, pandas have tiny, helpless young. The cubs

are the smallest newborns of all placental mammals relative

to the mother's size.

They'll both be isolated in a large

enclosure to encourage his natural instincts.

She's been chosen for being a protective, instinctive

mother, but she was born and brought up in captivity. She

knows nothing about living in the mountains.

He needs to discover what it means to be a wild panda.

Different altitudes have different species of bamboo, so

pandas have learned to move around to find the best kinds

for their diet.

They're not the only ones on the move. Tarkin, giant golden

goats that look like wildebeest, move up and down the

mountains to feed on summer bamboo.

There's a world of other animals. Golden snub-nosed monkeys,

like elves with blue faces, live here. These mountain

monkeys are unusual and rare. There's another type of panda,

a red panda. They're not actually related to giant pandas,

but part of the raccoon family.

In summer, pandas also come up here to avoid overheating.

But water is harder to find near the peaks. Even above 6,000

feet, pandas can suffer from heat stress. As the climate

shifts, so will the best bamboo, trees and water. Animals

will need more space to find new homes.

High in the mountains, autumn comes early.

It's a bounty of colors.

In 1985, researchers found a hollow that had been used as a

wild birthing den. What they learned became another lesson

for the cubs they were training for the wild.

In the wild, sometimes the mother will not leave the den at

all. She stays with the cub and is forced to fast for the

first month or so.

Like any bear milk, hers is among the richest in the world.

It carries more antibodies than any other animals because

the cubs are so underdeveloped and vulnerable.

He's a month old now. He's grown from three and a half

ounces to four and a half pounds. And when he's awake, he

can see and hear.

Over ten years of motherhood, she can only have three or

four young. That is the lowest potential birth rate of any

mammal.

Autumn brings a dramatic change of season. The monsoon

from India and Myanmar is channeled up valleys through the

Himalayas, as far north as the Qinling Mountains.

It arrives as mist and carries rain or snow.

Pandas, mothers and cubs come down the

mountains to spend the winter in the valleys.

The mist settles as low cloud, hiding the panda's wild world.

At the base of the mountains, the Wulong panda center is milder.

It's November and he's now three months old.

He's been living in the mountains for a long time.

An animal's personality develops early. Emotional responses

like courage or fear can be affected by as little as a

single incident in the first few months.

He's starting to get curious, but struggles to escape. His

mother leaves more regularly to feed herself now. So at

last, he's able to explore his world.

Pandas have a phenomenal sense of smell, better than a

bloodhound. Their hearing is good too. Eye sight, less so.

Strange.

A weird looking panda.

Pandas are the most beautiful animal in the world.

Head keeper Wu Daifu and the team have to become pandas to visit our youngster.

With panda pee. The last thing these surrogate mothers want

to be seen as or smell like is human. It's worth being a bit

ridiculous.

Contact is kept to a minimum and always in disguise. But

today, they have to do a health check. This is the only

contact he'll have with anyone other than his

mother. Being able to film this is a rare privilege.

Size, weight, teeth and claws, all healthy.

His life is more natural here than being with the other cubs

or playing together. But is it anything like being a wild

panda?

The training team are hoping to discover more about

how pandas are brought up in the wild. In the meantime,

Operation Undercover is successful. Totally fooled. Well, maybe.

It's winter back in the mountains and 30 degrees below freezing at night.

In the high summer feeding grounds, the snow just piles

up. But in the deep valleys below 3000 feet, there is life.

Bamboo is evergreen. The wild parents feed while the cubs remain hidden.

By early March, low-lying areas are beginning to thaw.

Over the next month or two, the animals start to head back up the mountain.

The breeding season, the rut, is about to

start and males head to claim the best areas.

Single females follow. Mothers have a more difficult

decision. The mating grounds are dangerous and females with

young seem to go into hiding.

Tarkin, the golden wildebeest, and golden monkeys follow.

This year, they are shadowed by the first month-long

expedition from Wulong. The team is on a key mission.

As part of the reintroduction process, the head

keeper Wu Daifu wants to find a panda breeding ground.

Discovering his cubs' potential to breed in the wild is crucial to the program.

Cameramen Jackie Poon and Wu Yanqi lead a filming

team each to increase the chances of finding a panda.

For three years, the film crew and rangers search for

breeding grounds. All the animals here benefit from the

protection of the panda reserve.

Days of exhausting trekking to find the breeding grounds.

And then, a sound from the next valley, their first panda

calls.

The scouts find fresh panda tracks.

And there, a wild panda, one of the rarest sightings in nature.

Wu Daifu sees his first wild panda after 15 years of working

with pandas in sanctuaries and breeding centers. Cameramen

Jackie Poon takes up the story. When you encounter a wild

panda, there's nothing cute and cuddly about them. Their

eyes are very focused and very alert of what's going on.

They are just a big bear. He's probably the dominant male in

the area. He may weigh over 300 pounds, and if he stood up,

reach almost seven feet. He's fearless and curious. He may

never have seen people before. We have to be really cautious

and really careful when we are doing this. Do we have to

give him space? What is the safety distance between this

individual and us and the camera? And we always have to

think, OK, if anything happens, what am I going to do? The

team follow him along a narrow mountain ridge. This is the

time of the spring panda rot, the month where males gather

to find females to mate. Pandas can smell hormones. Another

panda has left a urine message on a tree.

He'll add his own. He does a handstand to get as high

up the tree as possible, so that he seems bigger.

The wild panda catches another scent, a female in season.

He starts to roll in the snow and leaf litter. He's

mixing in his own smell. It's a conversation in scent.

It seems like he's playing, rolling around. But this is

serious business. This is a territorial wild bear, ready to

defend his patch.

There's a spot of blood in the middle of his flank. It's

the first sign of danger. It's the second sign of things to

come.

He rolls in the scent marks of a female. And then walks

towards the team. For Jackie, it's a moment of panic. All of

a sudden, the panda comes this way, we're all, get the kit

and just like run the other way. Just me shouting, go, hurry

up, hurry up! He completely ignores the rangers and crew

trying to get clear and just lumbers on. It's a bit too

scary. He's actually gotten really close. You can see we're just running away.

And then this is the second time he goes towards me. I try

to hold the shot as long as possible, but it's a bit too

scary.

Three times he wanders towards the crew and despite

getting close enough to touch, ignores them completely.

He's so focused on finding a mate, nothing it seems will distract him.

A panda sees the world through his nose. It may be tough out

here for a captive bred panda that hasn't the experience of

growing up with wild smells.

Wu Daifu, a world panda expert, realises it won't disturb

the wild panda if he moves in a little closer for a better

view.

This is the first time I've seen a wild panda this close.

I'm so excited. I hope we can let the wild pandas out and be

able to live freely in the wild like this panda.

It's really not easy. That's enough.

What becomes clear is that the world of a wild panda is

complex, chemical, and judging by the blood, dangerous.

The team returns with the reintroduction project

seeming more real now, and more difficult.

The weather this spring is not much better back at Wulong.

The cub is not as active as it used to be in the past. The

cub is now seven months old. His instinct is to

climb trees, but his mother's very protective.

She'll teach him everything she can, but she grew up

here, playing with her friends and treated like royalty.

Maybe trying to keep the cub on the ground is a maternal

instinct. Or perhaps when she was a cub 20 years ago, a

keeper or someone was afraid for her and stopped her climbing.

He has instincts too, perhaps triggered by his semi-wild upbringing.

No,

you don't.

He doesn't go far up the tree. His mother's anxiety has affected him.

Exploring in the wild would be dangerous, with predators

and rival pandas around. But here on the ground, in an

enclosure, he is safe.

He's gaining in confidence and coordination. Hmm, maybe.

His instinct to explore his world is good, but his coordination less so.

He doesn't seem like an animal meant for the ground at all.

While our panda family is kept isolated, the other pandas

are let out to play together. They should be shy loners, but

among friends, they turn into party animals.

After a few months in a panda nursery, they have graduated to the panda kindergarten.

It's still a puzzle. Why do panda cubs instinctively love playing so much?

Most of the pandas born here and across China are kept for

breeding. Some of them even have genes from areas where

pandas are now extinct. Every one of these cubs counts.

Isolated in his big enclosure, the panda cub starts his

second year of training. He's a clumsy climber. His wild

development's been held back.

Mother's fatty milk and little exercise have made him chubby. That was

hard.

Bamboo doesn't grow in the enclosure. It's delivered. But he

doesn't care about bamboo. He's still a baby. He's still on

milk.

Ah, solid ground.

Autumn turns again into winter.

Wild pandas are back in the valleys.

Pandas evolved from other bears 23 million years ago, at a

time when grasses, including bamboo, were replacing forests.

Fossilized skulls found in caves revealed that there

was a pygmy panda species, and an even more giant panda.

Even then, these prehistoric pandas had teeth adapted for eating grass.

Young pandas are little known from the wild, never

filmed, but dens in trees are thought to be important.

Old forests are like high-rise homes.

If more could be discovered about how cubs

survive in the wild, it could be copied in Wulong.

It's March, and the second big expedition into the

Qinling Mountains sets out. Another month of trekking long

distances, to find wild pandas.

Thanks to the snow, it's possible to find and follow a panda's trail most days.

The males are again competing for females, bellowing like stags.

Trees are clawed, and the smell of panda is there, even to human noses.

Then one day, a discovery. The pandas are more

nervous, and always melt quickly away into the bamboo.

With the prospect of spring, the other animals are moving

up the mountains. Red pandas will eat almost anything, but

here, bamboo is their main food.

Small, goral antelope move up, and so do groups of tarkin

that also specialise in eating bamboo. Bamboo is rich in

protein, and it's rich in nutrients. And the

animals are following the brief seasonal new shoots.

March brings unpredictable weather, and a storm moves in.

The tawny owl sits it out.

Then, a week later, the team discovers something astounding.

A male panda under a tree, and a second male, a challenger

in the bamboo.

Above them, in the tree, a third panda. It's a female,

probably the only one in the area, so she's their one

chance. Guarding her is the dominant male at the base of

the tree. Nothing like this has ever been seen before.

The rival backs away.

Female pandas are only fertile for a couple of days, so

every male battles to be in the right place at the right

time. After an hour, she starts to come down.

The male has to be careful. Females will attack

and can injure males if they don't want to mate.

The couple fight for only a second. He retreats, and she

makes her escape. She's not ready. Both males will follow

her until she comes into estrus.

With the snow melting, tracking is difficult.

The pandas become almost impossible to find.

One wet, misty dawn. The team finds the pair.

The female is above. It's the same standoff.

This mate-guarding behaviour is similar in many

animals. He's trying to keep her away from his rival.

She may just be hungry, or may just prefer the other male.

She challenges the old warrior, and again he backs down. The

balance of power isn't just with the males.

Calls between the male rivals become more frequent.

A showdown seems inevitable.

The challenger is to the left. He's younger, and takes the

high ground, an advantage in a fight. The old dominant male

backs down. But then he rallies and comes back in.

It's a psychological battle as much as one of

strength. This stressful build-up has taken weeks.

If you look carefully, you can see why the old male

is wary. His face is in tatters. And he's exhausted.

The challenger moves back and skirts around him.

This struggle, this dance around the female, takes tactics as well as strength.

It's a conflict between experience and youth. Timeless.

A week later, the female is found in a tree, with no sign of

either male. Instead, on the forest floor, there's another

mating dance. Golden pheasants. It's all show for them. The courtship of the circus.

This seems like a much more fun way to choose a mate.

The female panda peers down. The younger male, and no

sign of his elder. Youth has won out. He sniffs, licks the

ground, and drools. She's come into estrus, and is finally ready.

Then, in what they may imagine as a discreet corner, they

mate. The roaring, scent-marking, fighting, and being held

hostage may actually trigger her ovulation. It's similar

in other bear species, and it explains why pandas have such

problems breeding in captivity. Wild animals lead complicated lives.

Whether our cub in Wulong will have a clue what to do is a

big question. Another year into his preparation for release,

and he's now three. The panda equivalent of a teenager. In

the wild, his mother would be starting to part ways to let

him fend for himself. But there's no sign of letting go here.

They play together, just like she learned to

in the panda kindergarten with her friends.

He's still suckling.

Their isolation has made them closer. Far from helping him

to become self-sufficient, he seems more dependent on her.

He's a big baby. Having seen male pandas in the wild, it's

hard to imagine he'd do well in the battle for a mate. It

may just be a teenage phase, but he seems to have gone backwards.

He's just a giant softie. She's no better.

He can't even eat properly.

You've got to roll the leaves up into a

sausage with a little bit of water. Remember?

Bamboo shoots bamboozle him.

Yet within the teenager, a wild instinct is emerging. He's

just started scent-marking trees and restlessly patrolling.

But just when you think he's growing up, he's back to being

a cub again. Training for a future alone in a big bad world

is something all parents struggle with. It's impossible

to prepare for the unknown and the inevitable separation.

Freedom has a price, especially for those left behind.

The cub, almost an adult now, is carried into the panda

reserve. The crate is covered to minimize human contact.

His first steps without his mother.

Imagine the feeling, leaving mum, entering a new,

bewildering world. But it may be just what this cub needs to

grow up. He's in a huge enclosure, within the reserve, safe

from wild males. He'll stay here for as long as it takes,

getting used to the wildlife and freedom.

The enclosure door will be left open for him, when he's ready, maybe next year.

The following spring, it's the last expedition

into the mountains, this time for six weeks.

There's good news for wild pandas. The 40 or so different

panda reserves are to be absorbed into a massive new

protected area, three times the size of Yellowstone, over 10 ,000 square miles.

This will make a huge difference, especially as

a changing climate threatens the bamboo forest.

After weeks of searching on foot, the team find the dominant

young male, presumably the winner of last year's rut. He's

following a female. Females only breed every

few years, so she must be a different one.

The team is surprised to witness them mating. Maybe

pandas in the wild don't find it so difficult after all.

The old male is found, retired, in a den.

He's on the higher fringes of his old home range, marginalised, out in the cold.

His teeth are badly worn. Bear's teeth can't cope with coarse bamboo for 20 years.

His face still has the battle scars from last year.

Solitary pandas like our old male can travel significant

distances. One radio-collared panda travelled hundreds of

miles, going between reserves and crossing rivers and main roads.

It was this discovery that partly inspired the massive

new panda reserve, protecting all other wildlife as well.

The old warrior will roam widely, keeping out of the way

of other male pandas now. But he does seem to have a lot to

offer. We have one friend, a wild boar. To the team,

it's Pooh Bear, on a new adventure with Piglet.

One day, while tracking a female, there's an extraordinary

discovery. The most important find of the three-year

expedition.

A wild panda cub. Even the most experienced ranger has only seen one twice in 23 years.

The crew made sure that they were out of the way by setting

up on a high cliff. It's an emotional moment for cameraman

Jackie Pooh. This scenario has been here since yesterday,

so 24 hours ago, and the baby is still up here in the same

tree. And this is really rare, and we have never actually

seen this before, so is the rangers, they have never

actually seen this before. But this is what seems to be

happening right now. We have been monitoring the baby, and

we're hoping that the mother will come and collect the baby

by tomorrow. The cub, probably six to nine months old, stays

in the tree for over two days, unfed, while his mother is

away. His black and white markings match the branches as a

surprisingly effective camouflage. It's another piece of the puzzle.

He's hiding up there, most likely as a protection against

hormone-fuelled, rutting males. In other species of bears,

males kill first-year cubs, because having a young cub will stop a female from mating.

The team refocuses their search to look for cubs in trees.

They found another one, younger, also up in the branches all day.

This is not a one-off. This has to be normal wild panda behaviour.

This has significant implications. Young pandas

need trees, as well as bamboo, to survive.

Perhaps, for climbing, the cub knew better than his mum all

along. This wild cub means next year's training may need a

rethink.

Three years and over hundreds of miles on foot have

uncovered many of the important secrets of a panda's life in

the wild.

The newly enlarged reserve helps all the animals, thanks to the pandas.

And somewhere out there is a young male from another world.

Our world. It's been an extraordinary investment into one

animal. Now he's where he should be, and looking forward

to some serious adventures. In his own time, of course.

Thanks for watching!