Pregnant pandas are to be sent into a semi-wilderness area in China to rear their cubs in almost natural conditions as part of an effort to introduce animals bred in captivity to the wild.
The pandas will be fenced in, but in large areas and far from their caged enclosures. Keepers will then monitor them as they adjust.
Zhang Hemin, the head of the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Centre in the western mountains of Sichuan, and a leading figure in panda artificial insemination, said: “The pandas will give birth in this semi-wild environment and teach their cubs how to forage for food and survive in the wild.”
The eventual goal will be to release the young pandas out of the fenced areas to fend for themselves among a surviving population in the wild of about 1,650.
Six pregnant mothers have been placed on a shortlist. “We’ll eventually choose just one or two of them. Health, temperament and survival skills would be among the main criteria,” Mr Zhang said.
Advertisement
During the first year zoologists will monitor the pandas, and possibly even feed them, although with every effort to maintain the fiction that they are living in the wild.
Mr Zhang said: “Zoo workers and vets who enter the zone will disguise themselves as pandas by donning a black-and-white fur coat and crawling on the ground.”
A male cub, Xiang Xiang, was released into the wild in 2006 after three years of training but was found ten months later, apparently killed by wild pandas native to the area.