Never tease a panda I Pictures: pandas in China

China has a dream that the giant pandas it breeds in captivity will one day frolic in the mountains with their wild cousins.

This is the next challenge for the scientists who manage the country’s biggest reserve for captive pandas. They have mastered the art of breeding the world’s iconic and endangered animal; now it is time to send some of their babies out into the real world.

Zhang Hemin, director of the Wolong Nature Reserve and the China Research and Conservation Centre for the Giant Panda, says the Government is ready to go ahead with the next stage of this ambitious plan. He has already identified the four pandas to be the next pioneers.

The centre’s first experiment, with the five-year-old Xiang Xiang (Auspicious), ended in tragedy. After nearly three years of preparation, moving him into ever-bigger fenced areas to roam, and gradually reducing his daily helpings of bamboo, he was forced to forage for himself in the leech-infested, densely forested mountains.

Mr Zhang said: “It was really hard for the keepers who had cared for him since he was a baby to reduce his food. But we had to be hard-hearted. And he learnt how to find places where he could escape the leeches.”

But what he did not learn was how to protect himself from other pandas. Xiang Xiang is believed to have fallen to his death from a tree after being pursued by wild pandas angered at an intruder in their territory. He was released in April 2006, amid national fanfare. His body was found in the snow in February this year.

Some Western zoologists condemn the process but Mr Zhang is undeterred. “This was not a failure. We learnt from this,” he said. He plans to try again, this time with a pregnant female. And he says he is determined to find ways to transform the cuddly creatures that roll around in the arms of their keepers into aggressive animals able to hold their own in the wild. How, exactly, he isn’t saying.

Two females and two males have already been selected. He hopes wild pandas will be less likely to attack a female who strays into their territory. As for the males: “We need to increase their sense of how to avoid predators and how to fend off attack.”

With only 1,590 pandas in the wild, Mr Zhang believes it is crucial to improve their gene diversity to raise the animal’s chances of avoiding extinction. Reintroducing pandas bred in China’s reserves is one way to do that.

He has plenty of candidates to choose from. The success of China’s two main reserves in breeding, principally through artificial insemination, has resulted in a panda baby boom. He argues that the gene diversity of the captive population has almost reached a level of sustainability to ensure that the panda can survive for another hundred years. “When the population reaches 300 then we will be able to keep the genetic diversity for 100 years. That should take only another three or four years.”

A record 33 successful births took place last year. This year, the number was down to 31, but with a record number of 12 surviving pairs of twins. China now has 239 giant pandas in captivity, 128 at Wolong. With more twins, Mr Zhang says he is in a position to reintroduce one from each pair into the wild, because their genes would be less suitable for breeding among his captive population.

Western conservationists take issue with that approach, arguing that it is more important to ensure that the pandas in the wild live in a protected habitat that is as natural as possible and within an ecosystem safe from human intrusion. In such an environment, they say, the wild pandas should be able to breed more easily and thus ensure not only the survival of the species but of the surrounding ecology.

COMPLICATED CARE

— Censors in the Chinese city of Chengdu are drafting new laws to protect the image of the panda

— Male pandas in a zoo in Thailand have been shown videos dubbed “panda porn” in an attempt to teach them how to impregnate their female companions

— A prosthetics team from the University of Salford went to the aid of a three-legged panda in November by making a trip to Beijing to attach a specially made artificial limb designed to carry her full body weight

— The Chengdu giant panda breeding centre in China uses 4 tonnes of bamboo every day. Once cut, it is stored in misting sheds designed to keep it in optimum condition for the animals’ consumption

Source: Times archive, Chengdu breeding centre

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