Chinese officials send food to panda cubs

Some pandas are leaving the quake-stricken Wolong Nature Reserve en route to Beijing. Forty-seven people around the reserve are reported to have been killed by the May 12 quake.

Quoting government sources, Reuters is reporting that eight pandas are being flown to Beijing for the Summer Olympic Games. The government is sending bamboo shoots as well as apples, soybeans, eggs and other staples that the bears need to survive, the news agency reported.

China Daily says the pandas will “entertain tourists” during the Olympics and today will fly from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding to Beijing on a charter flight.

Pandas International, a nonprofit organization that provides medicine and food for the pandas, has posted post-quake photographs of the panda cubs being fed at the reserve. The estimated 1,500 pandas in the wild in China are found in the Sichuan province, which was devastated by the earthquake. The death toll for the quake is estimated at 50,000 people.

–Mary Forgione, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

[Photo: www.pandasinternational.org]

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 23, 2008 at 11:56 am by Mary Forgione and is filed under Asia, China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.