China's wild alligators to double in 10 years: report

FLORA AND FAUNA

China building new panda breeding centre: state media
China will start building a new giant panda breeding centre as early as next month after last year's 8.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed much of their habitat, state media reported Sunday. The new centre in the Wolong nature reserve will replace a destroyed base in southwestern Sichuan province where most of China's captive pandas were kept before the earthquake, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Huang Jianhua, the reserve's Communist party chief said a new location about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the old site was chosen "because the environment, water, weather and geological situations here are the best". "The pandas will be comfortable living here as it is not far from the former base," Huang was quoted as saying. "Safety is the priority." The new centre will cost 1.6 billion yuan (230 million dollars) with most of the funding coming from Hong Kong, Huang said, according to Xinhua. Five Wolong staff and one panda were killed in the May 12 earthquake, while two pandas were injured and one is still missing. Most of the reserve's pandas were moved after the quake to a nearby breeding centre in Ya'an City and zoos around the country. Six 18-month-old pandas stayed in prefabricated houses on the reserve, the report said. Wolong was built in 1980, as the world's largest breeding centre for the endangered species and was home to 142 captive pandas, about 60 percent of the world's total, the report said. There are about 1,590 pandas living in the wild around the country, mostly in Sichuan and the northern Shaanxi and northwestern Gansu provinces. A total of 180 are being bred in captivity, Xinhua reported.

by Staff Writers
Shanghai (AFP) April 19, 2009
China's endangered Yangtze alligator population is expected to more than double to 300 in the wild within five to 10 years, state media reported Sunday.

Currently there are more than 120 alligators breeding in a wider area than five years ago, Wang Chaolin of the Chinese Alligators Protection Nature Reserve, in eastern Anhui Province, told Xinhua news agency.

"We have for the first time found wild baby alligators. Normally their survival rate is only two percent," Wang was quoted as saying. "The finding of the infants indicates the number of the species is increasing."

Wang said measures such as the protection of baby alligators and the releasing of captive-bred alligators into to the wild were helping bring the species back from the brink of extinction, the report said.

The Yangtze alligator, also known as the Chinese alligator, was once plentiful, particularly along China's eastern seaboard, Xinhua said.

But pollution, a warming climate and human activity have made it one of the world's most endangered creatures in the wild, it added.

"I'm confident the number will reach 300 in the future," Wang said. "But humans are still the biggest threat to the animal."

China has put the Chinese alligator at the top level of its list of protected species.

The Chinese Alligator Breeding Research Centre was set up in Anhui 30 years ago. Since then, the number of captive alligators at the centre has risen from about 200 to more than 10,000.

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