Two months after China concluded the sixth population census, the State Forestry Administration Monday launched a census of the nation’s pandas.

The purpose of the fourth investigation of the nation’s most precious species includes counting the wild panda population, figuring out their habitat, age structure and migration range, according to the Xinhua News Agency. 

Counting wild panda numbers is a difficult and controversial science, relying on estimates based on the examination of droppings. 

The third and latest government survey, conducted between 1999 and 2003, put the population at 1,596, with 1,206 in Sichuan Province. 

This was up from 1,114 in 1988 but was still short of the 2,459 pandas counted a decade earlier.

The count will begin within a couple of days at the Wanglang National Nature Reserve in Sichuan and end in early July, said Yang Xuyu, chief of the wildlife resources management center of the Sichuan Forestry Department. 

“Excrement is the only clue that pandas leave for us if people want to get relevant information,” Chen Youping, legal representative of Wanglang, told the Global Times Monday. 

Besides the traditional method of examining bamboo fibers in excrement, DNA tests will also be conducted, Chen said. 

Scientists can collect intestine cells from the dung and identify each panda.

Conducted every 10 years by the State Forestry Administration, the panda survey, this fourth headcount is of special significance as it is launched three years after the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake damaged panda reserves, according to Hu Jie, a professor with the China West Normal University and a member of the expert group of the oncoming investigation.

“Although no panda bodies were found after the 2008 catastrophe, people are still worrying about their living conditions in and around the quake-hit area,” Hu told the Global Times Monday.

“One of the main emphases of the fourth census is to figure out the exact population and whether the range and location of the habitat have changed after that.”