Chinese government will spend 117 million yuan (US$14.14 million) to move 559 families out of Wolong Nature Reserve in southwest China's Sichuan Province to create a better environment for giant pandas.

Nearly 2,400 villagers will be resettled away from the reserve between this year and next year, said Zhang Hemin, director of the reserve's administrative bureau.

The land will be used for growing bamboo for the pandas.

A growing population in the reserve had led local residents to ask for more natural resources.

But their routines had already affected the habits of the giant pandas living in the wild, and some villagers even poached rare animals and secretly cut down trees in the panda's habitat, Zhang said on Thursday.

"The resettlement is helpful to the protection of the pandas and will greatly improve the reserve's ecological system as a whole to make it a `green paradise' as well as their home,'' he said.

Zhang said the villagers would be resettled in a special residential area of the reserve and they are encouraged to enter tourism industry, such as running restaurants. Each will receive a monthly subsidy from the government.

About 124 hectares of the land would be replanted with bamboo, the favorite food of the endangered pandas, he said.

As China's largest protective zone for the giant panda, the Wolong Nature Reserve is home to about 100 wild giant pandas and more than 60 artificially bred ones.

There are only about 1,000 giant pandas left in the wild, mainly in the hilly areas of China's Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi Provinces.

(China Daily June 28, 2003)