Wolong panda reserve is in quake-affected area

Authorities in China’s Sichuan province are still scrambling to deal with the human toll of today’s major earthquake, but there’s also an open question about the area’s best-known non-humans.

Centered near Chengdu, the provincial capital with a population of about 12 million, the 7.8 quake has killed at least 8,500 people, authorities said. It also shook the world’s foremost panda habitat, the Wolong National Reserve, about three hours’ drive outside Chengdu.

The reserve, which works with zoos worldwide, typically houses about 150 of the bamboo-eating animals, drawing about 100,000 tourists yearly. A webcam at the reserve shows several of the animals active and apparently well, but the video timestamp suggests the images were gathered Sunday before the quake.

At the San Diego Zoo, which has a researcher in Beijing, spokeswoman Christina Simmons said: ”We have heard through our contacts in China that the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center was not seriously affected.” The zoo’s researcher in Beijing is also well, Simmons said in an e-mail.

The quake took place at 2:28 p.m. Monday, local time. Officials at the Chinese national tourism office in Glendale, California, said Monday morning that they had no information on Wolong. Calls to the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles were not immediately returned.

— Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

[Photo: Panda at Wolong National Reserve prior to the earthquake, by Liu Jin AFP/Getty Images]

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 at 12:21 pm by Christopher Reynolds 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.