Wolong pandas slowly recover from trauma of disaster
Six new pandas arrived at Beijing Zoo last month from Sichuan, but few of the visitors flocking to see them would suspect the hardship the animals have endured in the past 12 months.
Four of them - Xiangge, Shuiling, Qingfeng and Wenyu - experienced first-hand the catastrophic earthquake that hit Sichuan a year ago when their home at the Wolong Giant Panda Breeding Centre was laid to waste.
The centre was just 30km from the epicentre and the quake destroyed much of the site, killing five employees and at least one panda.
When a South China Morning Post reporter visited the breeding centre a week after the earthquake, the four pandas sat listlessly on the ground. They appeared shell-shocked and tired - they had even lost their appetite for bamboo leaves.
'It took a while for them to recover from the shock,' a breeder at the centre said. 'For the first few days, they just hid in the trees and refused to come down.'
China has more than 1,590 pandas, according to a 2003 survey, and 76 per cent of them are in Sichuan. The centre was home to more than 140 before the quake, making it the largest of its kind in the country.
But its location meant it was vulnerable to earthquakes and landslides. It sits by a river on a narrow strip of land between two steep mountains.
During the earthquake, falling rocks destroyed most of the facilities and killed one adult panda. Much of the bamboo forest was wiped out and critical breeding grounds were buried under mudslides.
Zhang Hemin, director of the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda at Wolong, said the damage was particularly severe at the foot of the mountains, where the pandas sought shelter in the colder months. Considering the scale of the disaster, it is fortunate more were not harmed. Now, most of the pandas have been transferred elsewhere and the centre remains temporarily closed.
Even though a year has gone by, Li Desheng, deputy director of the centre, still remembers the moment the quake struck. 'All I could think about was the pandas. I wasn't able to relax until all the pandas were transferred to safety.'
In the aftermath of the disaster, international organisations such as WWF launched campaigns calling for government help for the pandas.
Most were transferred to the safer Yaan Panda Centre nearby. Seven were left behind - officials said they were kept there to show the centre was still functional. The four sent to Beijing were picked because they were physically healthy and recovered relatively quickly from the mental stress caused by the earthquake.
A new breeding centre is being built 10km away in Shenshuping, where the 27 hectare site is four times the size of the original Wolong centre. But the reconstruction process is proving slow.
Hong Kong is playing an important role. The government is providing financial and technical support to 122 reconstruction projects in Wolong . This includes a new road linking Yingxiu and Wolong, 23 projects inside Wolong nature reserve, 57 new schools, 30 medical centres and 11 social-welfare projects.
Construction is expected to start this summer, but the poor state of the road to Yingxiu - the quake epicentre - is hampering the effort. The 45km road was destroyed by landslides, and an unpaved mountain road only suitable for high-clearance vehicles is the only link.
According to breeding centre official Deng Linhua, the new road cannot open soon enough.
'Until the road is fixed, the construction will be slow, because most building materials have to be sent in from there,' Mr Deng said.
