Struggling to recover: A panda cub plays at the Giant Panda Breeding Centre in Chengdu on 7 May. China's quest to save the giant panda has been hit hard by last year's massive Sichuan earthquake.
Credit: AFP
CHENGDU: China's quest to save the giant panda was hit hard by last year's massive Sichuan earthquake, which destroyed a vital food source, inhibited its sex drive and sent tourism revenues diving.
While it is unclear how many pandas living in the wild were killed by the quake, it felled entire bamboo groves in their mountainous habitat and often rendered inaccessible those forests left standing.
For pandas being bred in captivity meanwhile, the earthquake coincided with a baby boom that is stretching resources and making it tougher for carers to find enough bamboo to go round.
Tight food supply
"The biggest impact has been on the food source of the panda, as a lot of bamboo was destroyed," said Wang Chengdong, the director of the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Centre.
"The food supply is very, very tight," he said. "The disaster has had a huge impact on our centre and brought big difficulties too for our national treasure."
The magnitude 8 quake struck Sichuan province on 12 May 2008 leaving nearly 87,000 people dead or missing in this rugged, southwest region where China's endangered panda population is concentrated.
At a nursery at this breeding centre, near the provincial capital Chengdu, staff in blue medical gowns looked after two baby pandas while on a platform outside a couple of slightly older ones wrestled merrily.
Baby boom
The cubs came from a recent baby boom among pandas which has boosted demand for the species' favourite food, bamboo, just at a time when supplies are low due to the earthquake.
In turn, it has made it harder for the centre's staff to find food for the finicky animal, while wild pandas have in many cases been cut off from their usual food sources.
"The panda is a picky eater and is accustomed to eating bamboo from the same habitat, but now this is harder to find," Wang told reporters at the centre, which is home to 83 pandas.
Providing the right diet has been vital to China's success in breeding the species, Wang said – there are nearly 300 in captivity, but only around 1,200 estimated to be living in the wild.
