Take a giant-screen journey to China to watch as a “bear whisperer” from New Hampshire helps a young panda learn to live in the wild in “Pandas,” a new IMAX movie opened Thursday, April 6 at The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk. Filled with scenes of the adorable black-and-white baby bears, “Pandas” will play at noon and 2 and 4 p.m. daily in Connecticut’s largest IMAX theater, with a screen that’s six stories high. (Times will shift on June 30.)
— an announcement from the Maritime Aquarium
“Pandas” arrives with excellent pedigree, having been made by the same team that created “Born to Be Wild,” one of the most popular movies ever shown at The Maritime Aquarium. (The Aquarium is the fifth-highest-grossing theater in the world for “Born to Be Wild,” a 2011 release that follows efforts to rescue and reintroduce orphaned baby elephants and orangutans back into the wild.)
This new IMAX film travels to Chengdu Panda Base in China, where scientists breed adult giant pandas in order to introduce the cubs into the wild. Those and other efforts have stabilized the panda population, to the point that the International Union for Conservation of Nature changed its listing for giant pandas in 2016 from “Endangered” to “Vulnerable.”
However, the IUCN also notes:
“The optimism engendered by these positive trends is dampened by evidence indicating that some panda populations are decreasing, particularly those found in the smallest and most degraded habitat patches …”
Threats include climate change, habitat loss, population fragmentization, and human intrusion.
