VZCZCXRO1019
RR RUEHGH RUEHVC
DE RUEHCN #0295/01 3430508
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 090508Z DEC 09
FM AMCONSUL CHENGDU
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3618
INFO RUEHOO/CHINA POSTS COLLECTIVE
RUEHCN/AMCONSUL CHENGDU 4331

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 CHENGDU 000295 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE PASS FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE/CITES 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: SENV TBIO CH
SUBJECT: MANY PANDA TWINS FLOURISH AT NEW YA'AN BREEDING CENTER 
 
CHENGDU 00000295  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary:    Sixteen baby pandas were born this year at 
the Ya'an Panda Breeding Center, successor to the 
earthquake-devastated Wolong Panda Breeding Center, which will 
reopen in 2012.  Deputy Chief Engineer Huang Yan of the China 
Panda Preservation Research Center, who is the science and 
engineering director for the Ya'an Panda Breeding Center, said a 
third panda breeding center will be built in Dujiangyan, a 
western section of Chengdu's municipal region.   All baby pandas 
born this year -- half of them twins -- have survived since the 
center learned how to keep switching the twins back and forth so 
that the mother panda would feed both of them.   The captive 
panda breeding population will be limited to 500.  The journal 
"Nature" will soon publish the panda genome.  End summary. 
 
 
 
Panda Mothers Tricked into Raising Twins 
 
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¶2.   (SBU) Sixteen baby pandas were born to the 91 panda 
refugees from the Wolong Giant Panda Captive Breeding Centre at 
the 54-hectare Ya'an Panda Captive Breeding Centre, a two-hour 
drive from Chengdu.  All the baby pandas have survived so far: 
the Ya'an center learned how to trick mother pandas by switching 
babies regularly back and forth so both twins were properly fed, 
Huang said.   At the panda breeding center, one in two births 
are panda twins, a rate scientists say is probably much higher 
than in the wild for unknown reasons.  Science director Huang 
said that Ya'an does not have the wide-open spaces of Wolong, 
the Ya'an Center faces the considerably expense of buying two 
tons of bamboo every day from local farmers.   Bundles of bamboo 
awaiting pick-up line the road for miles on the way to the panda 
captive breeding center located outside of Ya'an.  Yang 
Huanming, Director of the Genomics Institute of the Chinese 
Academy of Sciences, told ConGenOff that Huang Yan is the 
science and engineering leader of the Chinese captive 
panda-breeding program, even though his title is only Assistant 
Chief Engineer and the Chinese government has put several people 
above him in the PRC panda bureaucracy. 
 
 
 
Panda Breeding Success Raises Prospect of Panda Family Planning 
 
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¶2.  (SBU) Director Huang said that at an international 
conference on captive breeding of pandas, scientists decided 
that a captive population of 500 pandas would ensure sufficient 
genetic diversity so that pandas will be able to reproduce 
indefinitely.    Genealogies of captive pandas minimize 
inbreeding.  Currently the captive panda population in China is 
about 190 pandas.   The Chinese captive panda-breeding program 
hopes eventually to re-introduce pandas back into the wild, 
although some scientists are skeptical that this can succeed. 
One method being considered for captive pandas to be born in a 
large enclosure and have minimal contact with people so as to 
better prepare them to return to the wild.  Science director 
Huang has trips planned to both Japan and Australia.  Japanese 
pandas, Huang recently learned, are now going into heat twice a 
year.   He did not know why. 
 
 
 
¶4.   (SBU) Baby pandas born to pandas lent to foreign zoos also 
belong to China according to the standard panda agreement. 
(Note: Currently, the Smithsonian National Zoo is negotiating 
with China and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the 
mechanics of the return of Tai Shan, born in Washington, D.C. in 
¶2005.  End note.)  One UK scientist commented a few months ago 
that the panda might be at an "evolutionary cul-de-sac": it has 
a short intestine that prevents it from absorbing nutrients 
efficiently yet it is specialized at eating bamboo, which has 
little nutritional value, so it must eat large quantities of it. 
 That scientist was promptly pilloried in the Chinese press as 
an insensitive ignoramus. Foreign panda enthusiasts, including 
many from Germany, visit the Ya'an Panda Breeding Center.  The 
panda center raises some funds by selling the right to name 
pandas. 
 
 
 
Wolong Panda Breeding Center Will Re-open in Three Years; 
Additional Center for Dujiangyan 
 
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CHENGDU 00000295  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
 
 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Science director Huang said that Wolong Giant Panda 
Captive Breeding Centre, which he led at the time of the May 
12th Sichuan earthquake, would reopen in 2012 after earthquake 
damage is repaired.  A third center at Qingchengshan at 
Dujiangyan, a western section of Chengdu city, will also be 
built.  Huang said that it is clear that it is too risky to have 
just one panda breeding center. 
 
 
 
¶6.  (SBU) Huang told about his experiences as director of Wolong 
panda center when pandas, staff and foreign visitors were 
isolated for a week after the earthquake.   The Wolong center 
was out of contact with the outside world until a Chinese 
aircraft dropped a satellite telephone to the centre several 
days after the quake.   A road link to the outside world was not 
clear until one week after the quake.   No people were hurt, 
although Huang himself had a close brush with a large boulder 
that rolled down from the hills.  One panda was killed and a 
second panda was missing. 
 
 
 
Panda Genome Will Be Published in "Nature" 
 
------------------------------------------ 
 
 
 
¶7.  (SBU) The UK scientific journal Nature will publish an 
article on the giant panda genome by an international team led 
by Beijing Genomics Institute at Shenzhen.   The genome of 2008 
Olympic games mascot Jing Jing, a panda at the Chengdu base was 
sequenced.   The Tibetan Antelope will be the next endangered 
species to be sequenced by the Shenzhen team. 
BROWN