Friday January 2, 2009
Zoo eyes giant pandas
KUALA LUMPUR: Zoo Negara may soon be home to two giant pandas if negotiations with China are successful.
Its director Dr Mohamad Ngah said Malaysia was eyeing the giant pandas, ringtail lemurs, white tigers, and golden monkeys from Chinese zoos.
“On our end, we might be sending them our milky storks and painted storks, and other animals which we have in surplus.
For animal lovers: Zoo Negara worker Linda Misrah holding the loyalty card after it was launched at the zoo. “We are still looking at each other’s surplus list. It has to be a fair exchange, of course,” he told reporters after the launch of the zoo’s loyalty card programme here yesterday.
He said Zoo Negara had been working on the exchange programme for two years now, and had so far signed two memorandums of understanding (MoU) with the Shanghai Safari Park and the Ningbo Youngor Zoo in China.
“The MoUs state that we have an agreement for animal exchange, but we haven’t gone into the details of what animals,” he said.
He said they were hoping to bring in the lemurs sometime this year, but the situation was less certain with the giant pandas.
“This is a government-to-government negotiation. And giant pandas are an endangered species, we can’t just bring them in.
“If we do get the giant pandas, one male and one female, they will come with their own curator, veterinarian and Chinese bamboo. They can’t take our local bamboo,” he said, adding that they planned to keep the pandas for about two years.
Since 1984, China has offered pandas to other nations only on 10-year loan.
Dr Mohamad said Chinese officials also visited Zoo Negara last year to see if the place was suitable to house pandas. The estimated cost for the programme is RM30mil.
He added that if negotiations went through, the zoo would have to build a special panda enclosure next to the orang utan enclosure.
“We are still in the negotiating stage, and so far, it looks good,” he said.
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