Four-year-old Hua Mei, whose name means "China-America," is the first foreign-born panda to return to its ancestral homeland. She arrived in Sichuan Province in February from California's San Diego Zoo, where she was born to two pandas on loan from China.

Chinese veterinarians, concerned that she had little knowledge of sex after living only in captivity, showed her videos of mating pandas to prepare her for a series of "blind dates."

That education appears to have paid off. Hua Mei became pregnant by natural means and is due in September, the Beijing Morning Post reported, quoting researchers at the Wolong Giant Panda Protection Center in southwestern China.

China has poured considerable resources into protecting the giant panda, its unofficial mascot. While the panda population has risen, the animal remains endangered by heavy logging of its habitats. Also, groups of pandas live far from each other in widely scattered preserves, making breeding more difficult.

The State Administration of Forestry reported last week that the number of pandas in the wild in China has jumped by more than 40 percent, to 1,590, according to a four-year survey it conducted jointly with the World Wildlife Fund. However, the WWF cautioned that the spike may be attributable to more reliable surveying methods and not necessarily to real growth in the panda population.

(China Daily/Agencies June 17, 2004)