On May 29th, 2010, the State Forestry Administration announced that China s central government had confirmed that a pair of pandas named Shu Xiang (male) and Qi Miao (female) was to be given as gifts to the Macau Special Administration Region. Staff from Macau will be able to do regular feeding management, disease control and prevention, and conservation education independently so that the giant pandas can grow healthy and happy there. At the same time, they will be able to share giant panda information and biodiversity ideas to people who live in Macau and travellers. This will help enhance their awareness of environmental protection. From Jun. 28th, keepers and educators from Macau started to attend a special training. Some panda experts from the Chengdu Panda Base and Prof. Zhang Zejun from the China West Normal University, who was invited by the panda base, gave lectures for the Macau staff.
In order to achieve the anticipated result of the training, experts from the panda base wrote the teaching materials. Two groups will come to the training. The first one will have 6 people attend from June 28th to July 29th. The training has two main parts; theory and practice. At first, experts of the panda base will introduce the technical progress and outlook of captive panda breeding, panda behavior in captivity and the method for researching it, natural mating in captivity and its influencing factors, giant panda captive-breeding, biological bases of the giant panda, the theory of conservation education, hand-rearing, wild panda s habits and their proper habitat, panda population genetics management, feeding management and security for captive pandas, enrichment of the panda s enclosure and the training to do so, and finally medical treatment. There is a total of 33 hours of training. What s more, experts of the panda base led staff from Macau to do works such as feeding, conservation education, and panda training.
