A 12-year-old giant Panda displaced by the massive earthquake that
rocked China's Sichuan province in May has giveN birth to twins.
Chinese
state media report Guo Guo is the first panda to give birth since the
quake, and the first panda to give birth this year.
Officials say they were able to examine one of the cubs, and that it weighs just 170 grams.
Guo
Guo gave birth at a panda facility in Ya'an City, not far from the
Wolong nature reserve where she lived until the earthquake.
This is the third consecutive year that Guo Guo has given birth.
Chinese
officials evacuated pandas from the Wolong reserve to safer areas
around the country last month because of the danger of landslides and
scarcity of food.
Officials say the Wolong
reserve, which has about 150 pandas living in the wild, was severely
damaged by the powerful earthquake that hit Sichuan province May 12.
At least one panda in captivity died in the quake, as did five
employees of the panda center.
Forestry officials estimate the
earthquake destroyed or damaged more than 80 percent of the giant
panda's remaining habitat, including the bamboo on which it relies for
food.
A senior forestry official told a Hong Kong newspaper the South China Morning Post that about two-thirds of the wild
population is likely dead, injured or facing starvation.
Experts
say most of China's endangered wild pandas, a total of only about
1,500, live in Sichuan and the northwestern provinces of Shaanxi
and Gansu.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
