Vienna Zoo Giant Panda heads home to China

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http://news./s/afp/austriaanimalspandachina Vienna zoo's panda Fu

Long heads for China

 

- AFP – Vienna's Schoenbrunn Zoo animal keepers hold a cage with the

Panda cub named Fu Long (happy dragon). …

 

Thu Nov 12, 1:46 pm ET

 

VIENNA (AFP) – Fu Long the panda, Europe's first to be conceived naturally

while in captivity, is to leave his home town of Vienna for China next week,

the Schoenbrunn Zoo in the Austrian capital said Thursday.

 

The giant panda, whose name means " Happy Dragon " in Mandarin, is to be

transferred to a conservation and research centre called Bifengxia Base in

the Sichuan province, which is home to 60 other pandas and where it is hoped

he will breed.

 

Fu Long is now just over two and his birth in August 2007 was a sensation

because he was the first panda in Europe to be conceived naturally in

captivity rather than by artificial insemination.

 

" We're sad that our little one is leaving us. But we're proud that we're

returning a strong, healthy panda to China, " said the zoo's director Dagmar

Schratter.

 

Chinese ambassador Wu Ken said he hoped the panda's parents, who are still

in Schoenbrunn, " will give the zoo a new baby in the spring. "

 

Fu Long, who now weighs more than 50 kilogrammes compared with around 100

grammes when he was born, has become Schoenbrunn's star attraction, similar

to the polar bear Knut in Berlin.

 

Coupling of pandas in captivity is extremely difficult, since females are

only fertile three or four days a year. Another panda was born at a Madrid

zoo in 1982 thanks to artificial insemination.

 

Less than 1,600 giant pandas remain in the wild, according to the Vienna

zoo.

 

In 1984, China began its long-term panda lending programme to foreign zoos,

which pay up to a million dollars a year to house the creatures.