China Sending 4 Pandas Abroad in Fund-Raising Effort

BEIJING — Two pairs of China’s popular giant pandas are being sent abroad in an effort to raise funds for a research program on breeding of the rare animals.

One pair, from the Chengdu Zoo in central China’s Sichuan province, will arrive in Holland in May for a three-month visit, the official China Daily newspaper said Tuesday. The second pair, which usually lives at the Beijing Zoo, will leave on May 1 for New York, where they are scheduled to spend six months.

Both the New York Zoological Society and the Netherlands have promised to use the visits to raise funds to save the panda, facing extinction in its natural habitat, the newspaper said.

“The expected $120,000 from the Netherlands and the $600,000 from the United States will go mostly for the construction of a giant panda breeding research base,” the newspaper quoted Zheng Shuling, deputy director of the Administrative Office of the Chinese Assn. of Zoological Gardens, as saying.

Chinese panda experts raised eight cubs last year, almost one-quarter of the total bred artificially since the process was successfully introduced in 1963.

China will invest at least $1.35 million over the next three years to build the breeding research base near the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan, the report said.