PEKING -- At least 62 giant pandas have starved to death in China in the last three years because a certain type of bamboo, the only food the finicky animal eats, is disappearing, the official Xinhua News Agency said today.
Three pandas died from 'hunger and illness' in the first three months of this year, bringing the death toll to 62 since the animals' staple food -- arrow bamboo -- began to die out three years ago, Xinhua quoted a senior Forestry Ministry official as saying.
He said another 43 starving pandas have been rescued, including four hungry animals found between January and March this year in their mountainous homeland in southwest China.
The ranks of the shy, bushy-tailed creatures have been decimated since the summer of 1983 when the arrow bamboo, the only food the panda eats, began to flower and then wither, a process that occurs every few decades.
Despite efforts to diversify the pandas' exclusive diet, 44 have been found dead from starvation and another 18 have died while receiving medical treatment over the last three years, said Dong Zhiyong, deputy minister of forestry and head of the national rescue group for giant pandas.
Less than 1,000 giant pandas are believed left in a 30,000-square-mile habitat in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces, said Dong.
Dong also blamed the survival crisis on the deaths of 138 pandas during the mid-1970s, when no rescue measures were taken to help the starving animals. He said failure to mount a rescue effort then was a 'real disaster.'
Current rescue efforts will last between 12 and 15 years since it will take at least a decade before the new bamboo shoots grow big enough to become panda food, said Dong.
The state has allocated 12 million yuan ($3.75 million) for the rescue operation -- more than 10,000 yuan ($3,125) per panda -- in addition to nearly $3.7 million from donations, he said.
New measures are being adopted to improve rescue operations, such as a survey of where the animal lives and of the growing cycles for bamboo, Dong said.
In addition to improving the varieties of bamboo to make them flower at different times, officials will release captured pandas back to the wild, said Dong.
A total of 14 pandas have already been returned to their natural habitat and another 90 are living in seven panda farms in Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces as well as in various zoos.
