Xue Xue, a 55.8-kilogram giant panda bred in captivity in a dedicated conservation center in Sichuan province, was released into the wild on Tuesday.
The female giant panda, now in its natural habitat in the Liziping Nature Reserve, has undergone two years of training at the Sichuan Wolong Hetaoping Wild Training Base for locating for food and water while protecting herself from predators.
Xue Xue is the fourth captive-bred giant panda released into the reserve. The first one in 2006 named Xiang Xiang, or Lucky, died after a brawl over food and territory with wild pandas in 2007. Tao Tao, a male, was released in Oct. 2012, while Zhang Xiang, an artificially bred female, was reintroduced into the wild in Nov. 2013.
Zhang Hemin, director of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda of Wolong, said that the Oct. 14 release was different from others because the female panda's parents are both "captive-bred," suggesting that the center's wild training has improved.
China has taken serious efforts to breed its endemic giant pandas since the 1980s. In 1987, the Sichuan province center started with six pandas, which grew to 300 after successful captive-breeding.
Dr. George Schaller, a member of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, believes that China should rebuild panda populations more in the wild than in cages.
"They're obviously very rare, if there are only about 2,000 left. On the other hand, it's a species that has more attention and more money than any other endangered species in the world," said Dr. Schaller.
Currently, there are between 1,600 and 2,000 giant pandas living in the wild. In November, the population will be joined by another captive-bred female, two-year-old Xin Yuan.