China has laws protecting pandas. The pandas live in forests of bamboo. To try to increase the pandas population, China has planted large amounts of bamboo. The problem: When bamboo produces seeds, the old plants die. That makes planting bamboo very hard. China has reserved places for pandas to live. To see a panda in the wild is extremely rare. Even the rangers who patrol the forests rarely do.
People caught trying to kill pandas are given a life sentence. Other countries can "loan" a panda for research. The country can pay one million dollars for the panda, and the panda and all its babies are still property of China.