Latest Wolong National Nature Reserve Stories

All remaining giant pandas at a major breeding base in China's earthquake-devastated Sichuan Province will be evacuated as landslides and other post-quake dangers remain a significant threat, China's Chengdu Business Daily reported Tuesday. The decision to evacuate the pandas followed conclusions by experts that Sichuan province's terrain was still too hazardous for the Pandas and their keepers."The threats to safety from geological hazards in the Hetaoping Center's location are very...

The Walt Disney Studios and Chinese filmmakers Castle Hero Pictures and Ying Dong Media say they are teaming up on the new movie Touch of the Panda. The project was announced Sunday at the Shanghai International Film Festival. To be shot in Sichuan, China, the film is to feature giant pandas bred and nurtured at the Wolong Giant Panda Nature Reserve. The movie is to be made with the facility's official cooperation and supervision. The live-action movie is about a panda cub separated from...

After the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve received a damaging blow from the recent deadly earthquake in China, officials are now seeking a new home for the bears."It's better to move, I think," said Zhang Hemin, the chief of the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve.The Wolong reserve is just 20 miles from the epicenter of the May 12 quake, which has killed more than 68,000 people, including five reserve staff members.Most of the reserve staff members were not on-site during the 7.9-magnitude...

Officials in China have sent emergency rations of bamboo-shoots to a reserve housing pandas in the earthquake zone in Sichuan province, China's state media reported Thursday. The move was made because no one was collecting food for the bears in the aftermath of China's most devastating earthquake in decades.According to a government Web site, 47 people were killed near the Wolong Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda, the nation's largest panda breeding center. Thirty-five...

BGI-Shenzhen is pleased to announce the launch of the International Giant Panda Genome Project. This announcement follows on the heels of the Panda Genome workshop held on January 21"“22, 2008, in Shenzhen, China. Dr. Hongmei Zhu, a scientist from BGI-Shenzhen, stated that, "The goal of this project is to finish the sequencing and assembling of the draft sequence within six months." The giant panda is a much loved animal all over the world and is considered a symbol of China, as...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - A male panda born four years ago at the San Diego Zoo left for China on Monday to join that country's breeding program.Mei Sheng, which translates as "Born in the USA," was sent to the Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas as part of a loan agreement requiring all pandas born outside China to be returned there after the animals mature, zoo officials said."Mei Sheng will be missed ... but his role in the conservation of his species involves a move to...

BEIJING (AP) - China will fly a pair of giant pandas to Spain next month, state media reported Saturday, following through on a goodwill gesture promised during a visit by Spanish King Juan Carlos to Beijing earlier this year.The pair, seven-year old "Bing Xing" and four-year old "Hua Zui Ba" will be flown from their home in the southwestern city of Chengdu to Madrid on Sept. 8 by chartered plane for a ten-year stay, the Xinhua News Agency said.The pair are due to go on...

BEIJING (AP) - A mini-baby boom last year has pushed up the number of pandas bred in captivity in China to 217, state media said Wednesday.Some 34 pandas were born by artificial insemination in 2006 and 30 survived - both record numbers for the endangered species, Cao Qingyao, a spokesman for the State Forestry Administration, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua News Agency.The previous record was the 21 baby pandas born in China's zoos and breeding centers in 2005.China has been raising...

BEIJING (AP) - A giant panda in southwest China has given birth to a pair of twins, state media said, the latest additions in a baby boom for the endangered animals. Ya Ya, who lives in the Chongqing Zoo, delivered the babies about an hour apart early Tuesday, China News Service said. They were her first cubs, it said, and both mother and babies are healthy. The zoo has been closed for a week to give Ya Ya some peace, it said. One has been taken to the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and...

BEIJING -- The lightest panda cub born in captivity is doing well and putting on weight since his premature birth in China on the same day the heaviest incubator-bred panda was born at another research center, state media said on Thursday.The male cub only weighed 51 grams (1.8 ounces) when he was born at the Chengdu Giant Panda Reproduction and Research Center on August 7 along with his twin brother, who was almost three times as heavy, Xinhua news agency said.Most pandas born in captivity...