Backgrounder: Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas

    WOLONG, Sichuan, April 28 (Xinhua) -- The Wolong Nature Reserve, a 200,000-hectare area in southwest China's Sichuan Province, was founded in 1963 as the world-renowned "home of giant pandas".     

    The reserve is located on the upper reaches of Minjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze, China's longest waterway. It is home to at least 2,000 animal species and more than 4,000 floral species, including over 40 kinds of bamboos, giant panda's favorite food.

    About 154 wild giant pandas, or 10 percent of China's total, are living at the Wolong Nature Reserve in Wenchuan County, 130 kilometers from the provincial capital Chengdu.

    Wolong Nature Reserve is also home to China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center, a body jointly sponsored by the Chinese government and the WWF in 1980 as a major base for the artificial breeding of giant pandas.

    To date, the center has raised 103 giant pandas, nearly half of the total 207 artificially-bred giant pandas in the world.

    China started a 12.5 million U.S. dollar giant panda training project at the Wolong center in 2003 to train pandas how to live in the wild before releasing them.

    After nearly three years of training, Xiang Xiang, a four-year-old male giant panda raised at the Wolong center, became the first-ever released one out of more than 180 captive-bred pandas worldwide.

    Xiang Xiang will live in Wuyipeng, a bamboo-rich mountain area about 10 kilometers from his former home. Enditem

    Backgrounder: Giant panda

    WOLONG, Sichuan, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Giant panda, a species that has been living on the earth since the age of the dinosaurs, inhabited in most regions in South and Central China, Myanmar and Vietnam more than three million years ago.

    But as a result of climate changes and human activities, giant pandas' habitats have been reduced so drastically that only about 1,590 of the species still exist in the wild around the globe, most of which are found in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

    To date, China has 183 giant pandas bred in captivity, 103 of which are kept at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in Sichuan.

    Dubbed China's "national gem", giant panda is one of the most critically endangered species in the world and is considered "living fossils" from the remote periods of history.

    China founded its first nature reserve for giant pandas in the 1950s and launched a comprehensive plan to protect pandas and their habitats in 1992.

    To date, the country has set up 56 nature reserves for the rare animal, along with 10 giant panda protection corridors allowing them to move freely from one habitat to another.

    Thanks to its sustained efforts, China has effectively protected more than 70 percent of its giant pandas in the wild and at least half of their natural habitats.

    Bamboo shoots and bamboo leaves are giant panda's favorite food, but it also preys on small animals sometimes.

    Most giant pandas enter oestrum in April and May, sometimes in the fall. A female giant panda usually gives birth to just one baby at a time. Artificially-bred giant pandas often have very little sexual desire.

    China has been working hard to tackle giant pandas' breeding problems. Zoologists have resorted to artificial insemination and frozen sperm and have even shown them sex films hoping to arouse their sexual instincts.

    Today, China boasts state-of-the-art technologies for the artificial insemination of giant pandas and has reported 100 percent survival rate of baby pandas for five years in a row.

    China started a 12.5 million U.S. dollar giant panda training project at the Wolong center in 2003 to train pandas how to live in the wild before releasing them.

    Experts say the move will expand the giant panda population in the wild, improve their genetic diversity and help the critically-endangered species survive in the long term. Enditem

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