Photographing Pandas and their Return to the Wild | Nat Geo Live

China is performing a minor miracle right now. They are taking captive born pandas and releasing them back into the wild. They're also creating corridors and creating more habitat for pandas and a whole host of other species. So I had front row access to this and this was a quite a big privilege because no foreigners have ever been allowed to cover this. So I was there with a film team and we were covering this incredible moment as Hope, that was her name, was taking her first trepid steps out into the wild for the first time. And me trying to be empathetic, I dressed up in a ghillie suit because I didn't want to scare her when she was taking those steps out into the wild. And the director of the panda program, director Zhang Heman, also called Papa Panda, saw me and he came running up to me and he gave me a hug and he said, you will get to hold two baby pandas. President Obama, he only hold one. So I know it's so crazy. So they laid out their bumper crop that year of baby pandas. And then I got to go back, and this is very recent, this is this year, they actually had even a bigger bumper crop. I think it was 26 baby pandas born. It's incredible. And you know, they will melt your heart, truly. So they did something amazing. They cracked the code how you breed them because for a long time, for 15 years, they couldn't figure out how, you know, how you successfully breed the pandas. But it turns out pandas are like humans. They're picky. They don't have eHarmony or Match.com. So it took sort of realizing that you need to, you know, they needed to find a partner that they liked. And the females only are able to have, they basically have 24 to 72 hours to get pregnant. That's it, an entire year. So it's a very narrow window and you have to find the right partner for her. So they've done that. And what is so incredible is they're born blind, deaf, and just a little squiggle of a thing, and completely helpless. But the mothers are incredible. They just, they take such good care. They won't, for days, they go without water and food, and they just hold on to their babies and take care of them. And they're one of the fastest, fastest growing mammals. So this little guy is like maybe a month old, so they grow fast. And literally every week I'd go into the incubator room and they would just grow in front of your eyes. Incredible.