According to locals, Nonggang’s animals generally come out on cloudy and windy nights. When the moon is bright enough to illuminate the forests, many creatures tend to hide in caves for security. For an infrared camera equipped photographer such as myself, this raises some difficulties. An automatic infrared camera signals the shutter with an off-board infrared receiving and transmitting device. When an animal passes the transmitter, the receiver instantly activates the shutter to capture the scene. After nearly a week of working with several cameras combined to function without interruption, I was left with only a few images of butterflies. I became uneasy about my chances of fulfilling my shooting plan.

However, animals eventually came out for food. In late autumn, when forest food and water resources begin running thin, wild animals must travel further from their habitats to search for food closer to human-inhabited places. Early each morning, I saw a group of bold macaques descending the mountain to sneak some water from fishing ponds. Farmers carefully watched their chickens to make sure none were taken by invading leopards. But I, on the other hand, was on a mission to document such creatures.

I decided to set infrared transmitters along paths that the animals seemed to travel regularly. As I became more familiar with it, I found the seemingly messy dense forest to be actually well-organized, with plants of different heights co-existing in a manner that reminds me of tall and shorter buildings clumped together in man-made cities. A jungle can be divided into ground, middle, and canopy layers, each hosting a variety of strange and rare species. The animal’s pathways, though not easily recognized due to their irregularities, form a vital traffic network. Much like highways in cities, these paths enhance the mobility of wild animals.

During the next few weeks of my project, I photographed many rare and precious wild species, including leopards, tree shrew, and Prionodon pardicolor. Experts assert that documenting more than four carnivorous species within a month indicates that a forest has a relatively high degree of healthy growth. According to the reserve’s administrative station, because of the staff's frequent efforts to educate the villagers in the periphery, many former hunters have turned in their guns to become sugarcane farmers. Illegal logging is a rarity these days.

On the morning of my last day of shooting, Director Chen and several bird experts returned to the station with jubilance, after witnessing the rare Nonggang Rufous-capped babblers. The discovery of this new species in Nonggang several years ago sparked a sensation in biology circles. Today, this still mysterious land is known to be home to many rare species, some of which may be even more precious than the giant panda, such as the golden cat, clouded leopard, and Owston’s palm civet. Experts anticipate even more inspiring discoveries in Nonggang because of increased conservation efforts and expanding scientific exploration.

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About Nonggang Nature Reserve

Home to abundant biological resources, Nonggang Nature Reserve is one of China’s 14 key areas with terrestrial bio-diversity of global significance and one of the 40 class-A reserves jointly named by China’s State Forestry Administration and the World Wild Fund for Nature. Current statistics show that so far 139 animal species in 57 categories of 22 orders have been proven to live in the reserve, of which the white-headed langur, Presbytis francoisi, Assamese macaque, clouded leopard, python, and dwarf musk deer are under state first-class protection. Nonggang also features a wide variety of plants, some also under state first-class protection. Thanks to good recent conservation, the timber volume has soared from 120,000 cubic meters in 1979 to nearly 600,000 cubic meters today. Nongang is 98.8 percent forested, more than many other reserves in Guangxi.