Panda round-up in China

Press, 2 September 1983, Page 1

Panda round-up in China

NZPA-Reuter Peking China will round up giant pandas, threatened with starvation by the dying out of bamboo groves, and nurse them back to health in captivity. An emergency effort to save one of the world’s best loved and rarest animals has been approved by the Government, the Xinhua news agency reported.

China estimates it has 1000 pandas but they have been threatened with famine after the flowering of the arrow bamboo, a phenomenon that occurs every few years and causes the plant to wither. About 140 pandas were known to have died when the bamboo flowered in the mid-19705.

China has spent millions of dollars protecting its pandas and imposes severe penalties on anyone harming the symbol of the World Wildlife Fund, the conservation group seeking to protect rare species. The emergency programme involves nurturing weak and sick animals in captivity, evacuating healthy pandas to areas where bamboo has not flowered, and placing food and planting new shoots in affected areas, the news agency said.