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Wild Giant Panda on the Increase in China
According to the recently conducted third survey of wild giant pandas, the number of this animal in the Wolong Nature Reserve is increasing and their habitats are expanding.
The 200,000-hectare Wolong Nature Reserve, located in western Sichuan Province, southwest China, is world renowned as "Hometown of Giant Pandas" and "Paradise of Wild Animals and Plants". Since it was established in 1963, Wolong has adopted many measures, including closing hillsides to facilitate afforestation, and returning farmland to forests. As a result, the forest coverage has increased from 53 percent to 70.6 percent and the quality of air and water here has met the first-class standard of the State respectively.
Currently, in the Wolong Nature Reserve, there are over 450 species of wild vertebrate, including 13 species of animals under first-class State protection, such as giant pandas and golden monkeys and 44 animals under second-class protection. Besides, there are more than 4,000 species of plants, among which over 2,000 are plants of higher grade and 24 are precious plants of the State.
In 1980, China and the World Natural Fund jointly established the "China Research Center for Giant Panda Protection" in Wolong. So far, the center has successfully bred 37 giant pandas, 26 of them have survived. It's said that the nature reserve is building a five-square-km breeding ground to train artificially bred pandas' ability to live field life and send them back to the nature step by step.
Giant Panda is a kind of special animal of China, which is in imminent danger. Some 1,000 wild giant pandas currently surviving mainly live in the high mountains at the juncture of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.
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