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| Stuff imitating pandas transfer the six-month-old panda Taotao to the training field in Wolong, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Feb. 20, 2011. Giant panda Caocao and her child Taotao, the first giant panda born in a traing field for wildness, are now stepping up to a new phase of training as the six-month-old Taotao not only well handled basic skills such as walking, climbing trees and looking for food in nature, but also cultivated the sense of alert and expeling the different in king. As they move to a new training field on higher altitude, researchers will adopt edged technologies like Geographic Information System (GIS), Radio Fix and Global Position System (GPS) to monitor and better explore giant pandas' adaptation to wildness. (Xinhua/Chen Xie) |
BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Visitors in the mountainous Wolong Nature Reserve in Southwest China's Sichuan province were so amused to see people carrying a panda cub in a basket on Sunday morning that they couldn't stop taking pictures.
What they didn't know was that the animal would soon be taken to a new habitat high above sea level. Nor did they recognize that the arduous journey the panda would make for an hour and a half along a snow-covered mountainous path would form part of a program intended to release pandas into the wild, said Li Desheng, deputy chief of the reserve's administrative bureau.
In July 2003, Wolong began a project mean to train captive pandas to live on their own. Its first "graduate", Xiang Xiang, was released to the wild in April 2006, after undergoing three years of training. In February 2007, the five-year-old male panda was found dead, bringing an end to the first phase of the reserve's program.
Researchers believe Xiang Xiang fell from a high place after competing with other members of his species for territory and food.
The case revealed the hostility that wild panda communities often show to male outsiders, Li said.
Despite the failure, researchers refused to be discouraged. They saw no point in continuing their studies of panda breeding if the animals weren't to be released eventually into the wild.
In June 2010, the Wolong Nature Reserve resumed the project, planning to train four pandas in three years' time and release one or two of them from captivity.
A month later, the reserve brought four female pandas to its field-training base situated 1,800 meters above sea level. On Aug 3, Cao Cao, an 8-year-old panda, gave birth to a male cub, Cao Gen. Researchers, keen to let Cao Cao be raised with as little human interference as possible, decided to observe the mother-and-son pair from a distance using special equipment.
