November 10, 2003. Copyright 2002. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

Bumper year for giant panda cubs 

LONDON, November 10, Graphic News: Breeders of the endangered giant panda reported a record 16 babies being born in captivity this year, with cubs born in China, Japan and the United States.

A total of 29 pandas became pregnant this spring during the brief time when the animals are fertile, ChinaÕs official Xinhua News Agency reported, quoting Zhang Zhihe, chairman of the China Giant Panda Breeding Technology Committee.

The pandas gave birth to 19 young in the autumn, but two were stillborn and one died soon after. The survival rate Òis good news for the protection of the endangered animal,Ó Zhang said. Several were born to mothers that had been artificially inseminated.

These rare mammals -- now on the verge of extinction -- are renowned for their low sex drive and in the past animal breeding specialists have experimented with Viagra to stimulate the animals. In the past five years 78 giant pandas have been bred artificially, with 50 of them surviving, Xinhua reported. 

The giant panda dates back some two to three million years, but has been declining for thousands of years due to hunting by humans, logging and the expansion of agriculture, and climatic changes. Its populations originally extended throughout most of southern and eastern China, northern Myanmar, and northern Vietnam.

An indirect threat relates to the bearÕs reliance on bamboo shoots for food. Bamboo usually reproduces by sending out shoots under the surface, but periodically it reproduces in a different way: by flowering, producing seeds, and then dying. It take 2-3 years before new shoots appear from the seeds.ÊBetween 1974 and 1976 bamboo flowered and died over large areas of the Min Mountains of northern Sichuan province -- as a result, at least 138 pandas died.

With only about 1,000 of these 70-125 kg (154-275lb) pandas now living in the wild in southwest China, and about 120 giant pandas living in zoos and research centres around the world, conservationists have turned to captive breeding, artificial insemination and even research on cloning as ways of saving the animal from extinction.

China started its artificial breeding programme in the 1960s, but did not see a major breakthrough in birth and survival numbers until the end of the 1990s. Nine giant panda cubs born in captivity survived in 2000, while 12 survived in 2001 and 10 in 2002.
/ENDS

Sources: Xinhua News Agency, WWF