China eyes panda relocation plan: official media
Posted:2008-7-9|Source:internet|No. of Views:
BEIJING (AFP) — Experts have drawn up a 290-million-dollar plan to relocate one of China's major panda breeding centres after it was badly damaged during the recent devastating earthquake, state press said Tuesday.
The Wolong Giant Panda Research Centre, which was near the epicentre of the 8.0-magnitude earthquake, would take seven years to relocate, according to the plan submitted to national authorities, Xinhua news agency reported.
The move is necessary because aside from the damage to the centre, large areas of bamboo forest that make up the pandas' main diet were destroyed, the report said.
The centre would be built in Huangcaoping, which is elsewhere inside the remote 200,000-hectare (490,000-acre) Wolong Nature Reserve in southwest China's mountainous Sichuan province, it said.
The reserve was established in 1963 in Sichuan's Wenchuan county, the epicentre of the May 12 earthquake that left nearly 88,000 people dead or missing and up to five million homeless.
The Giant Panda Research Centre was built in 1980 and has been at the forefront in the battle to save the endangered species as a leading site for captive panda breeding.
Five workers at the centre were killed in the earthquake that also left one panda dead and another missing, according to Chinese press reports.
Fourteen pandas have already been moved out of the centre following the earth, while 48 remain. Another 150 pandas are believed to live in the wild in the Wolong Nature Reserve.
If the plan -- jointly drawn up by the reserve, Beijing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences -- is approved, the centre could be completed by 2015 and cost two billion yuan (290 million dollars), the report said.
The new centre would include a 650-square metre (7,000-square foot) lab, a panda hospital, a 1500-square metre cub pen, and a bamboo planting field, it said.
According to Chinese experts there are nearly 1,600 pandas living in the wild in China, mostly in Sichuan and neighboring Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, Xinhua said.
Another 180 pandas are being raised in captivity in China.
