Reports from the China Panda Breeding Technology Committee tell the stories of 10 new cubs. Their successful births this year were the result of advances in artificial breeding methods. And their numbers include a giant panda born in Japan. Committee Director, Zhang Anju gave details of the 10 baby giant pandas.
In the spring of this year, the Chinese Wolong Research Center for Giant Panda Protection was home to nine giant pandas of childbearing age. The center adopted a technique for procreation that combines artificial insemination with natural mating. By autumn three of the nine had become mothers. Altogether they produced four cubs and so far all have survived.
In the Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center and Chengdu Zoo, 10 female giant pandas of childbearing age had their chance of parenting. Five became pregnant with four cubs surviving. Shu Lan is one of these new mothers. She was visiting from Lanzhou Zoo in west China’s Gansu Province to breed successfully for the first time in Chengdu.
On July 17 in Chongqing Zoo a female giant panda of a relative advanced years has also been lucky. This old lady gave birth to twins with sadly only one surviving. She owes her success to a wholly natural encounter with the father.
Well worthy of special mention is baby Xiongbang who was born in Japan but will still be a Chinese bear. Her mother Mei Mei came to Japan in 2000 on a visit to Adventure World in Shirahama, Wakayama. This was part of a 10-year Sino-Japanese cooperative project in giant panda research. Mei Mei clearly enjoyed her visit for she brought baby Xiongbang into the world in the early spring of this year.
“The recent remarkable success in giant panda breeding is a real piece of good news for this much loved, endangered species,” said Zhang Anju. “It can be attributed to long hours of hard work on the part of the Chinese researchers. They have now devised relatively mature techniques in the artificial breeding of giant pandas and these are well founded on a sound body of experimental knowledge.”
“Dedicated specialist units have carried out research on the physiology, pathology and breeding technology of the giant panda over a long period of time. They have achieved considerable success since China first began to conduct experiments in the artificial breeding of giant pandas in the 1960s. Ways have now been found to overcome the obstacles in the three major areas of difficulty. China leads the world in encouraging mating, in achieving successful conception and in ensuring the subsequent survival of the cubs. In the past five years 78 panda cubs have been bred artificially in China, with some 50 surviving,” said Zhang.
The China Panda Breeding Technology Committee was established in 1989 as a professional technological organization. It is engaged in giant panda protection as well as in breeding research. Its main function is to assist the relevant state authorities to organize and coordinate scientific research related to the giant panda. It works to maintain and develop the artificially bred population of giant pandas and to revitalize the wild population through the release of pandas bred in captivity.
The Committee held its annual meeting recently in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. No fewer than 80 delegates attended. There were scholars engaged in giant panda research together with zoologists from the United States, Britain, Japan, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and of course China’s mainland.
The giant panda is thought to be one of the world’s oldest and most endangered species. The current wild giant panda population amounts to only about 1,000. Their range is mainly among the mountains around the Sichuan Basin. Adding to this there are some 110 giant pandas in captivity around the world.
(China.org.cn translated by Zhang Tingting, December 3, 2002)
