China expert worried about panda survival rate
© 2000 Reuters Limited
September 22, 2000
BEIJING - China must learn more about the dietary needs of endangered giant pandas to improve the poor survival rate of those bred in captivity, state media said yesterday.
The China Daily quoted panda expert Chen Yucun as saying that China had nearly mastered breeding of the notoriously fickle procreator in five decades of research, but only 59 of the 280 bred in captivity had survived to the age of three.
Chen, director of the Fuzhou Giant Panda Research Centre in southeastern China, said survival was low due to the "lack of in-depth research on the nutrition and anti-bodies the animal needs".
Not a single cub bred entirely by artificial means had survived, Chen said. Most pandas born in captivity are produced by a mixture of artificial and natural insemination.
He called for state-funded research to development reliable ovulation monitoring and pregnancy diagnosis techniques, and to learn the proper temperature for storing panda sperm.
The giant panda is China's national symbol. But it is an endangered species, with just 1,000 animals believed to exist in the wild, where they are threatened by human encroachment and the rampant logging that has denuded China's forests.
In the wild, pandas roam the mountainous areas in China's provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi.