Pandas arrive Beijing from earthquake's epicenter for Olympics visit

BEIJING - Eight pandas reached Beijing safely Saturday after a long journey from their damaged reserve near the epicenter of the recent earthquake in China.
The pandas will spend the next six months at the Beijing Zoo on a special visit, which was planned long before the quake, for the Olympics in August.
The eight 2-year-old pandas were flown to Beijing by a special plane from Chengdu, the capital of hard-hit Sichuan province in central China.
They have been under careful watch because they seemed nervous after the earthquake, sometimes eating and sleeping less. But they appeared lively after they were put into their exhibit space at the zoo on Saturday evening, even putting their paws on the glass that separated them from the public.
“I'm not sure about the mental state of the pandas right now," Ye Mingxia of the Beijing Zoo told The Associated Press days ago. “We will have to carefully observe them after they arrive."
But Wang Pengyan, deputy head of the pandas' home - the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve - assured the state-run Xinhua News Agency that the animals were fine. “The pandas have recovered from any nervousness about the quake and are all in good condition," he said Saturday.
The reserve, in a damp mountainous area, was badly damaged in the May 12 quake.
Conditions remained so bad at the reserve that in the past week the Chinese government shipped in about 5 tons of bamboo to feed about 60 pandas there.
Two pandas have been missing since the quake.
By Saturday the quake was reported to have killed more than 60,000 people, including five staff members of the panda reserve.
The panda is a powerful symbol of China and the country engages in what is often called “panda politics" by lending out the rare animals as a goodwill gesture. Among the pandas found safe at Wolong after the quake were Tuantuan and Yuanyuan, two pandas that have been offered to Taiwan.
About 1,590 pandas live in the wild, mostly in Sichuan and the western province of Shaanxi. An additional 180 have been bred in captivity.
The Wolong reserve is part of efforts to breed giant pandas in hopes of increasing the species' chances of survival.