Beijing, September 20: Sixty giant pandas who were transferred to zoos around China after last year’s devastating earthquake in Sichuan province destroyed their home are set to return in 2012, state media reported.
The 8.0-magnitude quake in May last year left more than 87,000 people dead and missing in Sichuan, and seriously damaged the Wolong nature reserve, which had 63 pandas in captivity, the official Xinhua news agency said late Saturday.
One panda was killed in the tremor, one is still missing, and another died of an illness, the report quoted Luo Zengbin, deputy head of the Sichuan Provincial Forestry Department, as saying.
The quake also killed 12 people who worked with the pandas, seriously injured 57 others, and damaged nearly 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) of the animals’ habitat in southwestern China, the report said.
The surviving animals were moved to zoos in other parts of the country while the Wolong base underwent a 380-million-yuan (56 million dollars) reconstruction programme, expected to be completed by 2011.
They should return to their home base in 2012, the report said.
There are about 1,590 pandas living in the wild around China, mostly in Sichuan, northern Shaanxi and northwestern Gansu provinces. A total of 180 have been bred in captivity, according to earlier reports.
But their notoriously low libidos have frustrated efforts to boost their numbers.
In a recent report issued by the World Wildlife Fund, the conservation group warned that the giant panda could soon die out as rapid economic development is infringing on its way of life.
—Agencies