China's Bumper Crop Of Pandas

By Sora Song

China got a third helping of "double happiness" last month when a giant panda named No. 20 gave birth to twins at the Wolong Giant Panda Protection Research Center in Sichuan province. It was the latest blessed event in what is shaping up as a banner year for the woefully endangered species. No. 20 was the third artificially inseminated panda to bear twins since July, and there are about a dozen other expectant moms in the province, most of them living in specially built, air-conditioned delivery rooms to protect their payloads. In a rare show of environmental goodwill, the Chinese government recently earmarked $8.4 million for panda preservation. And researchers are proposing some creative ways to spend it. To perpetuate the 3 million-year-old species, a scientist suggested using bears or rabbits as surrogate mothers, while others raised the possibility of cloning. Regardless of the method, however, breeding pandas is tricky; of the 200 pandas born in captivity since the 1960s, less than half have made it to adulthood. Says Yu Changqing, panda program coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund in Beijing: "Our focus should be on increasing the number of pandas in the wild."

--Reported by Hannah Beech

With reporting by Hannah Beech