Giant pandas in the Baishui River Nature Reserve in northwest China's Gansu Province are facing a food shortage, as the arrow bamboo trees begin to bloom, making them unappetizing to pandas.

The acreage of blooming bamboo has reached 7,410 hectares, or 12.2 percent of the nature reserve's total area, said Li Fuyi, an official with the nature reserve administration.

Li said, currently 102 pandas live in the nature reserve, 22 of which live in areas affected by blooming bamboo.

"More giant pandas might face shortage of food as the acreage of blooming bamboo is likely to expand in the coming years," Li said.

Arrow bamboo is the major food for giant pandas. The bamboo plant blooms and then dies every 60 years, causing a severe loss of food for giant pandas. New bamboo takes ten years to grow, and, during the gap, giant pandas face severe food shortages.

Blooming bamboo has been reported in the nature reserve three times since the 1970s, which has lead to the drop of the number of giant pandas in nature reserve from more than 300 to 96 in 1998.

Baishui River Nature Reserve Administration sent workers to trace those pandas affected by the blooming bamboo. It is now ready to throw in food for these pandas to survive the threat. A special clinic was also established to treat those pandas sick from starvation.

Pandas are among the world's most endangered wild animals. According to statistics from the State Forestry Administration released in 2004, the number of pandas in the wild in China has risen by more than 40 percent from 1,110 in the 1980s to 1,590 nowadays.  A total of 161 pandas live in captive breeding programs worldwide. Pandas mainly live in mountainous areas in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.

The Wolong Center in Sichuan, founded in 1963, is the largest panda reserve in China. It has an area of 200,000 hectares and is world-renowned as the home for pandas.

(Xinhua News Agency June 1, 2005)