"Bamboo has blossomed. Held in her mother's arms, Mimi is counting the number of stars in the sky. How beautiful the stars are and where is my breakfast tomorrow… Please let me take care of you, just like we do for ourselves. The world will become more beautiful. The Sun rises and shines both you and me. We breathe the same air and we live together on this world."

This is the song popular in China in the mid-1980s, which triggered out nationwide attention on living conditions of the panda, dubbed as national treasure of China. Today, the panda and its habitat attract even more attention worldwide. On July 12, 2006, members of the 30th session of the World Heritage Committee (WHC) unanimously voted to put China's giant panda 's habitat in Sichuan on the World Heritage List.

In the late 1980s, foreign experts from UNESCO, when surveying in Jiuzhai and Huanglong nature reserves, recommended that China should apply for the inclusion of the World HeritageList for the giant panda's habitat, thus initiating the decades-long application endeavors. When the success of the application was achieved in Vilnius, Lithuania where the WHC's 30th session took place, local people in Sichuan seethed with excitement and celebrated this good news with singing and dancing. It is reported that the municipal government ofYaan, where the core habitat of the giant panda is located, has decided to designated July 12 as the city's ecosystem conservation day.

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