After years of charming millions of people around the world with their furry bodies and clumsy antics, foreign-born giant pandas are adapting to new lives in China.
After years of charming millions of people around the world with their furry bodies and clumsy antics, foreign-born giant pandas are adapting to new lives in China.
The fluffy envoys are loaned to overseas zoos as part of Beijing’s « panda diplomacy », with the offspring returned to China within a few years of their birth to join breeding programs.
And as they sit among leafy surrounds in conservation centers in southwest China chomping on bamboo, they are oblivious to their diplomatic roles—or the crucial part they could play in saving their species from extinction.
« Our work is very intense and very urgent and we need to replenish the wild panda populations (with those) in captivity », Zhang Hemin, chief expert at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP), told reporters during a recent press tour.
Behind him, US-born panda Bei Bei sorted through shoots of bamboo with his paws as he sat inside his exhibit at the Ya’an base in Sichuan province.
« After the fourth national giant panda census, we found that our wild population has formed 33 giant populations, but 22 of these populations are relatively small in number », he explained.
