Long term sustainable plan Participatory activities to raise concern. Donate old books to local kids.
EcoAction's brochures are full of amazing travel inspiration.
5% of your payment directly supports the non-profit projects for the conservation and local communities.
"Be the change and witness" to spread the ecotourism and responsible travel. Share your responsible travel story.
2015-08-19 10:03:22 By Luo Peng Reads(1570)
There are five ways we can improve our life Well-beings, BE ACTIVE, TAKE NOTICE, CONNECT, KEEP LEARNING and GIVE.
This trip offers YOU the chance to learn and involve in the important work of Giant Panda conservation, as well as exploring the stunning natural beauty and mouth-watering organic gastronomy of Sichuan. We are not spectators but participate and really experience the conservation of panda full-on.
When we work on the development of a city or village, we should also consider the natural living environment for the animals. It shouldn't be that we just think of giving them food and lodging inside a house. Well, yes, living better is more than just having a place to stay and having enough food to eat. Free life and exerting innate habits are also needed for all the animals.
Can Giant Pandas really return to wild? What can we do to help them toughen up, completely shake off dependence on humans and integrate into a wild population? These are still questions for scientists, and for we every single human being. But can we really participate in those important amazing work as a traveler? What have been done? And how we can spread positive impact?
Day1 Ya'an downtown, stay at locally owned and managed farm stay
Pick-up at Chengdu airport, 1.5 hours bus to Ya'an downtown
Highlights:
History, culture and gastronomy
Leisurely evening walk along the city's river
Opening reception, pre-visit lecture/training workshop
Day2 Ya'an Bifengxia Giant panda center, stay at locally owned and managed farm stay
Highlights:
Volunteering work
Feeding and close interaction with the baby pandas
Natural scenic
Interpretation work
Day3 Habitat of wild Giant Panda, stay at Shimian County
Highlights:
Crisis for Giant Panda at Xiaoxiangling
Collecting baby bamboos, mushrooms and other wild favors
Hydropower stations on the Dadu River and the impacts to the environment
Beauty of nature
Day4 Liziping Nature Reserve, stay at Mamadi station of the reserve
Highlights:
The only river without power station in Shimian- Luding River in the reserve
Learn about the conservation work at the reserve
Local people and Yi culture
Public participation in conservation of pandas- Discussion on sustainability
Day5 Liziping Nature Reserve, stay at the reserve
Sunrise in the mountain, looking into Gongga
Hiking and tracking the panda in the wild with scientists
Forest vertical structure and different scenic: coniferous forest, alpine meadown and rich biodiversity
Hot spring in the wild
Campfire party with local people
Day 6 Sichuan flavor exploration, homestay at Hanyuan County,
Highlights:
Exploring the ancient commercial passage, Tea-Horse Road
Local Sichuan flavor, cherry harvest, organic farming
Farewell ceremony and party
Day7 Back to Chengdu airport via the highway
Close to the most amazing creature in the world
Learn about Giant Panda, take care of the baby pandas in the center and participate in the conservation work.
A Mouth watering taste of Sichuan
The distinct geographic location created the uniqueness of Sichuan -stunning scenic, rich biodiversity, abundant history and culture, hunger arousing cuisine, and enthusiastic people (like our Founder, Luo Peng). Is there a particular word to describe the whole Sichuan? Nope. But you just know when you are there.
Thanks to their knowledge of traditional farming, our supplier farmers provide you the healthiest food without chemicals during the planting and of strictly controlled origin.
You can relax in the knowledge that all the foods you have are strictly controlled with transparency that you even can taste the cherry (for example) on the tree, and track the farming processing as well if you'd like.
Meanwhile, EcoAction tries every possible way to promote fair trade and minimize economic leakage. We deliberately choose local suppliers and pay directly to the local farmers for their products and service. Besides, we motivate and train to empower them and create a direct-to-customer sales distribution network.
As always the practitioner, we strongly believe these can promote our Well-beings: BE ACTIVE, TAKE NOTICE, CONNECT, KEEP LEARNING and GIVE, which a responsible traveler is also implementing.
Time: Volunteering in helping captive-bred pandas back to the wild. Help with experts in the field tracking pandas and collecting research data.
Talent: Join us and discuss with us how we can do better and help more with local sustainable development.
Money: We deliberately choose the local suppliers so that we can minimize the economic leakage and help locally mostly. What's more, at EcoAction, 5% of your payment directly supports the non-profit projects for the conservation and local community. And, there is beyond more.
As we believe, the aim of conservation is to help the wild creatures live in the nature independently freely. We respect different lives, because we human are only a species of this world, equal to other thousands of.
The key work (most challenging too) of Giant Panda conservation nowadays, is to send captive-bred pandas back to the wild and track them reproducing successfully in the wild. At the Liziping Nature Reserve, Ya'an, Sichuan, captive-bred pandas were released and have been tracking and under surveillance through GPS hoop by scientists. Every single day, the scientists and staff of the reserve travel over mountains to track the pandas.
The key of any conservation story is still people. It is essential and indispensable to involve local people in protecting their own home and environment because they depend on and live harmony with the nature for generations. EcoAction's core value and proposition is to empower local community and give them decent alternatives to live on.
Liziping National Nature Reserve locates in the Yi Minority County, where a village is only several kilometers away. Besides the environmental education to locals, we hope sustainable agriculture and by-products Cfair trade tourism, can economically help local people, so as to involve them positively in conservation.
Au Jihua is a very successful story of local participation. Jiahua, Yi, was born and grew up in the village and now is working in the reserve on pandas tracking project. He's also helped and guided several PhD students in the wild. Jiahua will be one of our local guides in the reserve too.
Ecotourism is defined as "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people." (TIES 1990)
As a responsible traveler, we hope YOU to actively learn about and be involved in the program of conservation as well as local development, meanwhile, to experience the most authentic traveling. Furthermore, another important part of conservation is to improve the environmental awareness of public. We hope people learn about nature and appreciate nature, then participate in nature conservation. And YOU, can be the best ambassador for this positive impact!
CUHK has helped the building of Mamadi Monitoring station deep in the mountain, which uses environment-friendly passive thermal control system and helps the conservation work much more convenient and efficient. Just as the designer, Professor ZHU Jingxiang at CUHK, said, "design for the user", we hope the social responsibility of designer is the pioneering work of our travelers' social responsibility. Yes, this pioneering work is only the very beginning and we sincerely don't want to stop but to spread and promote the positive impact. And as you know, we still can do more and help more. Share the story, be the ambassador of the CHANGE!
Price from USD1680. More to read at All about Giant Panda