World's only captive brown giant panda adopted

A ceremony was held Wednesday at the Qinling research center of giant panda breeding in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, to celebrate the adoption of the world's only captive brown giant panda.

The male brown-and-white panda Qizai eats food at the Qinling research center of giant panda breeding in Shaanxi Province on Sept. 7, 2018. [File Photo: Xinhua/Zhang Bowen]

The male brown-and-white panda Qizai (meaning "7th son"), born in 2009, was adopted by Pandas International, a Denver-headquartered non-profit organization co-founded by Suzanne Braden and Diane Rees in 2000, which aims at ensuring the preservation and propagation of the giant panda.

Granting the adoption of Qizai shows the appreciation for Pandas International, which has been donating vaccines, lab instruments, baby panda cribs and milk powder to the center and helping with its daily work, the research center said.

The world's first brown panda was discovered in 1985 in the Qinling Mountains. All recorded photographs of wild brown pandas were taken in the area, with one specimen in the Changqing National Nature Reserve in the province's Yangxian County last March.

The research center also expects more international and domestic organizations and individuals to participate in panda conservation.