There are estimated to be only about 1600 wild Giant pandas roaming the mountains of China. Zhang Hemin of the Woolong Nature Reserve and the China Research and Conservation Centre for the Giant Panda has reported that they are becoming quite successful at getting this emblematic animal to breed (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3051725.ece ). About 30 cubs are currently produced in captivity per year with quite a high incidence of twins. What is less easy is successfully releasing these animals into the wild, even if this is done by gradually increasing the area into which the released animal can move and encouraging the subjects to find more and more of their own food. Mr Zhang seems especially keen to release one member of a pair of twins to reduce the build up of genetic problems. The major difficulties in such programmes are that the animals are only likely to thrive if they are released into suitable habitats that are not already occupied by wild Giant pandas. The latter roam quite widely and are very intolerant of released animals (it has be suspected that they have been implicated in deaths). The chances are that the wild animals are more practised in fighting, appeasement and avoidance that the captive bred beasts. Suitable habitat would also have to be relatively free of human disturbance (pandas reared by humans may well respond differently to man from their wild counterparts). None of this should be especially surprising as many of the same issues are apparent in captive breeding plus release programmes involving primates where teaching subjects about what constitutes food, danger, a potential mate etc consumes a large amount of the budget.
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