The first artificially bred panda to be released into the wild has died, possibly after a fight with wild pandas, less than a year after he gained his freedom.

Xiang Xiang, whose name means auspicious, had been trained for three years in survival techniques and defence skills, and his death deals a blow to China’s plans to try to save the endangered animal. However, officials said that they would not allow Xiang Xiang’s death to divert them from their programme to try to reintroduce pandas into the wild.

The five-year-old panda’s body was found on February 19 on snow-covered ground in the forest of southwestern Sichuan province. Zhang Hemin, head of the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Centre in Wolong, said officials had decided not to release the news of Xiang Xiang’s death until they were confident that they had established the cause.

Heng Yi, another official at the research centre in Sichuan, said: “Xiang Xiang died of serious internal injuries in the left side of his chest and stomach by falling from a high place. The scratches and other minor injuries caused by other wild pandas were found on his body. So Xiang Xiang may have fallen from trees when being chased by those pandas.”

The 176lb (80kg) panda was released from Wolong in April last year after training to build a den, forage for food and mark his territory. He also developed defensive skills such as howling and biting.

However, that training was not enough to save a young and untried male panda from attack. An official, Li Desheng, said: “We chose Xiang Xiang because we thought that a strong male panda would have a better chance of surviving in the harsh natural environment. But the other male pandas clearly saw Xiang Xiang as a threat. Next time we will choose a female panda.”

Xiang Xiang became the poster boy for the research centre’s ambitions when keepers opened the doors of his cage last year. He waited for a second and then scampered off into the bamboo forest with a global positioning device attached to his collar.

This experiment to try to increase the estimated 1,600 panda population in the wild got off to a rocky start. In late December rangers noticed from his radio-collar that Xiang Xiang wasn’t moving. They tracked him down and found bites on his neck, apparently from a fight with a wild panda. He was treated and sent back.

Xiang Xiang is now buried at the foot of a mountain near the centre where he was born.

The WWF urged caution in the ambitious plan to introduce captive pandas into the wild. Fan Zhiyong, of the wildlife conservation organisation, said: “Giant pandas are very sensitive when it comes to their own territory and usually one wild panda occupies a territory that covers several square kilometres.”

Xiang Xiang almost certainly strayed into someone else’s patch and paid the consequences. With 34 panda cubs born last year, the best season in China’s artificial breeding programme, keepers may be keen to try again.

Cruel nature

— Mara the lioness, aka Elsa – star of the 1966 hit movie Born Free – was reared in domestication and released into the wild after the film’s launch, with her three cubs. She died soon afterwards, succumbing to babesiosis, a parasitic blood disease

— Keiko, the orca whale featured in Free Willy, was released into the Icelandic sea in 1998 after years of preparation. He had difficulty fishing for himself, developed a cold through stress and finally died of pneumonia in 2003

— The California Condor Reintroduction project took a blow in 2004, when the first chick to be born in the wild in Arizona for 80 years was found dead.

— In 2005 an unwanted python released into the Florida Everglades met a sticky end when he took on an alligator. The Burmese snake attempted to swallow its opponent whole – promptly exploding and killing both parties

— A Japanese breeding farm announced in March that an egg laid by artificially raised oriental white storks had hatched naturally – the first to hatch in the Japanese wild for 43 years.

Sources: www.bornfree.org.uk, CNRS, Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, Peregrine Fund

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