Four wild giant pandas died of old age this year at a major habitat in northwest China's Gansu Province, a forestry spokesman said Friday.

The monitoring network of the State Forestry Administration has observed the deaths, all of which were reported at Bailongjiang nature reserve, Cao Qingyao, a spokesman with the administration, told Xinhua in an interview.

He ruled out the possibility of death caused by disease or injury, saying, "It is clear that all the four are cases of natural deaths."

Cao said his administration has built a comprehensive observation network based on state-of-the-art technologies and equipment to ensure the accuracy of observation.

This is the first time the Chinese government has announced deaths of giant pandas in the wild.

The life expectancy of giant pandas is 25 years. Meimei, the world's longest living panda in captivity, was regarded as a "centenarian" when she died earlier this month in a south China zoo at the age of 36.

Bailongjiang nature reserve covers 142,265 hectares in the southern part of Gansu Province, bordering the southwestern province of Sichuan, another major panda habitat in China.

The place has long been known as a home to giant pandas. Panda's droppings are constantly seen in its mountains and dense forests, and the forestry monitoring network has detected wild pandas many times. Yet the exact population in the giant panda community is not available.

Pandas are among the world's most endangered wild animals only found in China. According to statistics the State Forestry Administration released in 2004, the number of pandas in the wild rose by more than 40 percent from 1,110 in the 1980s to 1,590 today.

Meanwhile, another 161 giant pandas are kept in captivity at zoos worldwide. Pandas mainly live in mountainous areas in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.

(Xinhua News Agency July 22, 2005)