BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Founded in 1963 and covering an area of 200,000 hectares, the Wolong Nature Reserve in the southwestern Sichuan Province is famous as the "hometown of giant pandas".

    An estimated 154 wild giant pandas, covering nearly 10 percent of the total number in China, live at the Wolong nature reserve in Wenchuan County, western Sichuan, their largest habitat in China.

    In 1983, the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center was established in the Wolong nature reserve, which is some 130 kms from Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, as a part of the country's special project to protect the endangered animal.

    Chinese experts have worked hard to tackle the pandas' breeding problems and have resorted to artificial insemination, frozen semen and even showing the pandas videos on natural mating in the wild to arouse their sexual instincts.

    Currently, the Wolong center has 98 raised giant pandas (not including the 16 newly-born cubs in 2005), the largest raised group in the world, as the total number of human-raised giant pandas in the world is 207.

    In 2005, 16 panda babies born in 11 births in the Wolong center all survived, accounting for about 76 percent of the increase across the country last year.

    The center has reported 100 percent newborn survival rate for five years in a row.

    In the past four decades, more substantial efforts have been made by the Wolong nature reserve to protect and improve the ecological environment. Now the forest coverage has risen from 45 percent in 1975 to over 80 percent. Enditem