Qinghai zoo announces birth of third pair of snow leopards
Print Edition
A ZOO located on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau said yesterday it has successfully bred a pair of snow leopard cubs.
The twins were born on June 14 at the Xining Wildlife Park — in the capital of northwest China’s Qinghai Province — but zoo authorities waited two months to announce the new arrivals out of fear they might not survive, said Qi Xinzhang, its deputy curator.
“The death rate among newborn leopards is very high, so we say the breeding program has been a success only after they have survived their first two months,” he said.
The cubs are the first born to 7-year-old mother Er Bao and 5-year-old father Ning Ning.
They are also the third twins to be born at the zoo, after pairs arrived in 1985 and 2012, while three other snow leopard cubs were born in 1984.
“Snow leopards rarely care for their newborns so the ones born in 2012 had to be reared by keepers. But the fact that Er Bao is feeding her cubs means we can now see what happens in the wild, which is of great value to us,” Qi said.
The keepers have not yet made contact with the cubs so their gender is unknown.
“We plan to introduce them to the public in the middle of September, when they are stronger. Then we can also do a physical exam,” Qi said.
To make sure the cubs are getting all the nutrients they need, Er Bao is fed a diet of milk, calcium tablets, cod liver oil, eggs, mutton and pigeon, said keeper Quan Shouyuan.
To keep human interference to a minimum, Quan said he enters the leopards’ quarters only twice a day, to feed them and check on their well-being.
At all other times, the cats are monitored by closed-circuit surveillance cameras.
Snow leopards are usually found in the Himalayan ranges of central and south Asia at altitudes between 3,000 and 5,500 meters. They are now a rare sight in the wild due to a loss of habitat and poaching.
About 3,500 to 7,000 snow leopards are thought to be living in the wild, with a further 600 to 700 surviving in zoos around the world.
The species has been pushed to the brink of extinction by farmers protecting their livestock and hunters who sell its fur and body parts.
About 2,000 to 2,500 wild snow leopards live in China.
The Xining park’s artificial breeding of three cubs in 1984 marked China’s first captive-breeding program for the cats. The zoo has eight adult snow leopards, making it the largest facility of its kind in China.
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