Article: M’sian zoo negotiating for two pandas from China

Published: Thursday January 1, 2009 MYT 5:33:00 PM
Updated: Thursday January 1, 2009 MYT 8:18:39 PM

M’sian zoo negotiating for two pandas from China

KUALA LUMPUR Zoo Negara is negotiating with China to get two giant pandas.

The estimated cost for the programme is about RM30mil

Its director Dr Mohamad Ngah said that Malaysia was currently eyeing the giant pandas, ringtail lemurs, white tigers, and golden monkeys from the Chinese zoos.

“On our end, we might be sending them our milky storks and painted storks, and other animals which we have in surplus.

“We are currently 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 on Thursday.

He said Zoo Negara had been working on the exchange programme for two years now, and so far they have 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, for example,” he said.

He said that they were hoping to bring in the ringtail 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 had been offering pandas to other nations only on 10-year loans.

Dr Mohamad said that Chinese officials had also been to Zoo Negara last year to see if the place was suitable to house pandas.

He added that if the negotiations went through, Zoo Negara would have to build a special panda enclosure, and it would be located next to the Orang Utan enclosure.

“We are still in the negotiating stage, but so far, it looks good,” he said.

This article was taken from: The Star Online: Nation: 1st January 2009