South China's Guangzhou City has launched a bid to be a new giant panda-breeding center following the quake-led damages to the famed Wolong center in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Zhang Delu, assistant to general manager of Guangzhou-based Xiangjiang Safari Park, was quoted by Friday's China Daily as saying that his center was applying to the State Forestry Administration for permission to do so.

If permitted, Guangzhou, provincial capital of economically-strong Guangdong, will become one of the few protection centers qualified where pandas can breed in captivity.

Only Beijing and the provinces of Sichuan and Fujian have panda-breeding centers now.

"I think the park has all it takes for panda breeding with the state-of-the-art infrastructure and our rich experience of taking care of rare animals like pandas, koalas and golden monkeys," Zhang said.

Currently, the safari park has 10 pandas, five of which reached there on Thursday from the Wolong center, just 30 km from the epicenter of the quake.

It was expected they would stay in the park for three years, said Dong Guixin, the park's general manager.

Zhang Hemin, chief of the Wolong Nature Reserve Administration, said 54 pandas have been moved out of the center, with only seven left.

Eight were flown to Beijing on May 24 for a six-month stay. Eighteen were transported to the Bifengxia base in Ya'an, Sichuan, on June 18.

The Wolong reserve faced severe secondary geological disasters as landslides and mud-rock flows had occurred frequently recently, posing a serious threat to the safety of the surviving animals.

(Xinhua News Agency June 27, 2008)