Ya’an, China, June 24 (EFE).- Due to their cuteness, apparent clumsiness, naivety and good-natured and fluffy appearance, pandas are often the main attraction of every zoo they arrive at, but the objective of experts in China is to guarantee a growing population of this species that lives freely in its natural habitat.
The number of pandas, which in 2016 went from being an endangered species to a vulnerable species, has grown steadily in recent years, partly thanks to the reintroduction of specimens born in captivity trained from day one to return to nature.
This is a task in which conservation bases such as those in Hetaoping or Bifengxia, in the central province of Sichuan, are dedicated, where newborn bear cubs receive the necessary preparation to rekindle their wild instinct, survive in nature, rejuvenate the population free and refresh the genes to alleviate decades of inbreeding.
“They are actually self-taught, they learn quickly and spontaneously. What we do is provide them with the appropriate environment, an artificial environment as similar as possible to their natural habitat,” Wu Daifu, an expert on the subject at the Giant Panda Research and Conservation Center, told EFE.
The first phase of the process begins in the first year of life in an area of between 2,000sqm and 3,000sqm.
“This allows us to monitor them more easily, observe them and minimize the damage they may suffer. During this period, the bear cubs learn to find water sources, something essential for their survival,” Wu said.
In the second phase, once they turn 1, the bears’ diet changes and in addition to mother’s milk they need bamboo.
“In this period they will learn to find bamboo, how to stay away from their natural enemies and how to seek shelter to avoid danger and all this training is done spontaneously, human intervention is minimal,” the expert added.
In this second stage the area in which they move expands to several thousand square meters, “a surface similar to that of the habitat in which they find themselves when they live in nature in the wild,” Wu said.
Since 2003, 12 pandas born in captivity have been released in Sichuan, of which 10 are still alive, and the survival rate is increasingly high: at the end of last year, the population of this species in the wild totaled 1,900 specimens, to which are added the 728 who live on bases.
The situation is much better than in 2015, when alarms went off after the fourth panda census carried out by China warned that 22 of the 33 existing groups of wild pandas were facing extinction.
This path has left some historical names, such as Cao Cao, the first female reintroduced to the wild. It happened in 2017 and that same year, almost immediately, she mated with a male who lived in the wild and gave birth to the bear cub Tao Tao. EFE
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