A thousand years ago, more than 20,000 pandas roamed wild through their native China. But within the last few decades, human have destroyed more than half the pandas' habitat. Humans have also poached them, and polluted and overpopulated the earth - all of which makes the panda vulnerable to extinction. Yet now the giant panda is slowly making a comeback. How? From the Sibert Medal - winning author of Team Moon and Girls Think of Everything comes...

"Ecosystems today are dynamic and complex, leaving conservationists faced with the paradox of conserving moving targets. New approaches to conservation are now required that aim to conserve ecological function and process, rather than attempt to protect static snapshots of biodiversity. To do this effectively, long-term information on ecosystem variability and resilience is needed. While there is a wealth of such information in palaeoecology, archaeology,...