Giant Panda is a living fossil that only resides in China today. Up to 90% of giant panda today are living in the mountainous areas in the West part of Sichuan. The Breeding and Research Base in Chengdu is the most accessible place for travelers to visit this endangered and beautiful animal. The Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Base was built to imitate the wild ecological environment of pandas. It covers a space of 560 mus (92 acres), with a green coverage of 96 percent. The base created a perfect ecological environment for the living and breeding of pandas and other precious and rare wild animals. It breeds over 20 pandas and lesser pandas, black-necked cranes, white cranes and others.It is a panda breeding scientific research institute built in accordance with international standards for the purpose of rescuing the endangered wild animal, i.e. the panda. It includes a scientific research building, an open research laboratory, an animal hospital, an animal house, a panda playground, a swan lake, a panda museum, and a comprehensive service department.Here, green bamboo and trees, birds, and flowers combined with man-made sights constitute the living and breeding place for pandas and other rare animals. Till 1998, the base had bred 32 pandas, given birth to 48 baby pandas, of which 28 lived, and accomplished scientific research in over 50 related subjects, winning more than 30 awards.
Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, home to more than 30 percent of the world's highly endangered pandas, covers 924,500 hectares with seven nature reserves and nine scenic parks in the Qionglai and Jiajin Mountains, between the Chengdu Plateau and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The sanctuaries constitute the largest remaining contiguous habitat of the giant panda, which is recognized as a "national treasure" of China and is a flagship for global conservation efforts. This species is a relict from the paleo-tropic forests of the Tertiary Era. The giant panda feeds almost exclusively on bamboo in the wild and its preferred habitat is between 2,200m to 3,200m. As a unique single species and family the giant panda is very important for studying mammal classification and evolution. Within the sanctuaries, the main centers of giant panda population are in the Wolong Reserve in the northeast; Fengtongzhai Reserve in the southeast; and in Jiajin Mountain Provincial Park to the southwest. There is also the species' most important site for captive breeding.