Yahoo News 19 Apr 09;
SHANGHAI (AFP) – China will start building a new giant panda breeding centre as early as next month after last year's 8.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed much of their habitat, according to state media.
The new centre in the Wolong nature reserve will replace a destroyed base in southwestern Sichuan province where most of China's captive pandas were kept before the earthquake, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Huang Jianhua, the reserve's Communist party chief said a new location about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the old site was chosen "because the environment, water, weather and geological situations here are the best".
"The pandas will be comfortable living here as it is not far from the former base," Huang was quoted as saying. "Safety is the priority."
The new centre will cost 1.6 billion yuan (230 million dollars) with most of the funding coming from Hong Kong, Huang said, according to Xinhua.
Five Wolong staff and one panda were killed in the May 12 earthquake, while two pandas were injured and one is still missing.
Most of the reserve's pandas were moved after the quake to a nearby breeding centre in Ya'an City and zoos around the country. Six 18-month-old pandas stayed in prefabricated houses on the reserve, the report said.
Wolong was built in 1980, as the world's largest breeding centre for the endangered species and was home to 142 captive pandas, about 60 percent of the world's total, the report said.
There are about 1,590 pandas living in the wild around the country, mostly in Sichuan and the northern Shaanxi and northwestern Gansu provinces. A total of 180 are being bred in captivity, Xinhua reported.
