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godzilla 21 September 2006 Endangered & Extinction 80 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Beijing – For the first time a giant panda born and raised in captivity will be released into the wild Friday by researchers in China.

Four-year-old Xiang Xiang was fitted with a collar containing a global positioning device to track him as he wanders the remote mountain region surrounding the Wolong Giant Panda Research Centre in south-western Sichuan Province, researchers told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

His experiences ‘will help scientists study how artificially raised pandas adapt to the wild,’ Zhang Hemin, the centre’s head, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Xiang Xiang, a male who weighs 80 kilograms and is 1.1 metres in height, was born at the centre in August 2001 through artificial insemination, according to Xinhua news agency.

The giant panda has spent the last three years in a 200,000-square-metre natural habitat training compound learning how to select food, mark his territory and fend off intruders by howling and biting as a wild giant panda would do.

Xiang Xiang, which means auspicious, was released in late April so he can easily feast on his favourite food, bamboo shoots which are now emerging.

Giant pandas raised in captivity have less natural instincts and are often unwilling to mate. Females in the wild normally have a cub once every two to three years, while only 24 per cent of those in zoos or reservations bear young.

While hailing Xiang Xiang’s release as a significant move, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) said protecting panda habitats are of ‘critical importance.’

‘Fragmentation of the panda areas is a real problem,’ said WWF China representative Dermot O’Gorman.

‘Not being able to move across the habitat because of human disturbance is a problem for pandas.’

More than 180 pandas live in captivity and about 1,590 remain in the wild, mostly in the mountains of Sichuan, according to Xinhua.

They are threatened by loss of habitat, poaching and a low reproduction rate.

© 2006 dpa – Deutsche Presse-Agentur