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Eight earthquake pandas arrive in Beijing for Olympics

May 24, 2008

BEIJING (AP) — Eight pandas reached Beijing safely Saturday after a
long journey from their damaged reserve near the epicenter of the
recent earthquake in China.

The pandas will spend the next six months at the Beijing Zoo on a
special Olympics visit that was planned long before the quake.

They have been closely watched because they seemed nervous after the
earthquake, sometimes eating and sleeping less. But the pandas
appeared lively after they were moved into their exhibit space at the
Beijing Zoo on Saturday evening, even putting their paws on the glass
separating them from the media and the public.

"I'm not sure about the mental state of the pandas right now," Ye
Mingxia of the Beijing Zoo told The Associated Press earlier this
week. "We will have to carefully observe them after they arrive."

But Wang Pengyan, deputy head of the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve,
assured the state-run Xinhua News Agency that the pandas were fine.
"The pandas have recovered from any nervousness about the quake and
are all in good condition," he said Saturday.

The eight, 2-year-old pandas were flown Saturday afternoon by special
plane to Beijing from Chengdu, the capital of hard-hit central Sichuan
province.

Their home at the world-famous Wolong reserve was badly damaged in the
May 12 quake, which was centered just 20 miles away in a damp region
of narrow, winding mountain roads.

By Saturday, the quake had killed more than 60,000 people — including
five staff members at the panda reserve. Conditions remained so bad at
the reserve this week that the Chinese government arranged an
emergency shipment of about 5 tons of bamboo for the nearly 60 hungry
pandas at Wolong. Two pandas have been missing since the quake.

The panda is a powerful symbol of China, and the country engages in
what's called "panda politics" by lending out the rare animal as a
gesture of goodwill. Among the pandas found safe at Wolong after the
quake were Tuantuan and Yuanyuan, two pandas that have been offered to
Taiwan.

About 1,590 pandas are living in the wild, mostly in Sichuan and the
western province of Shaanxi. An additional 180 have been bred in
captivity.

The Wolong reserve is part of efforts to breed giant pandas in hopes
of increasing the species' chances of survival.

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