China returns artificially bred panda to nature
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E-mail Xinhua, October 11, 2012
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China sent the artificially bred and trained panda into the Liziping Nature Reserve in southwest China on Thursday.[Photo/CFP] |
China on Thursday sent an artificially bred and trained panda into the wild in the southwest of the country, a move which authorities said marked a new phase for the nation's panda protection efforts.
Born in the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan province in August 2010, "Taotao" is male and two years old. At 10:13 a.m. Thursday, it walked out of its cage, ran straight toward a bamboo forest in the Lipingzi Nature Reserve in Sichuan's county of Shimian, and embraced its new life.
The release of Taotao to nature was the second of China's such efforts after it set free five-year-old "Xiangxiang" in 2006. However, the first try failed after Xiangxiang died during fights with other wild pandas for food and territory about a year after release.
Scientists and experts later drew upon from the experience and improved training methods. In June 2010, the nation resumed small-scale training programs for pandas before returning them to nature. The new training focused on the panda cub learning from its mother.
"As opposed to Xiangxiang's captive-bred environment, Taotao has lived and grown in semi-wild conditions since being very little. This means that its fighting capability and survival skills both improved significantly," said Zhang Hemin, director of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda.
Before Taotao's release, it had gone through three rounds of training in preparation for going back to the wild, according to the State Forestry Administration and the Sichuan provincial government, which jointly organized Thursday's panda release.
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