The city government of Chengdu, capital of southwestern Sichuan Province, announced Monday that it would build a giant panda theme park in its northern suburbs.

The projected giant panda theme park, the first of its kind in China, will be built by expanding the existing Chengdu research center for the purpose of breeding giant pandas, said a spokesman for the city government.

On completion, the giant panda theme park will cover 233 hectares and accommodate about 40 giant pandas.

The Chengdu research center for the propagation of giant pandasis the only professional giant panda research organization on the Chinese mainland. It is also the sole center in the world which carries out researches on and breeding of giant pandas through relocating them to a man-made environment with an imitation outdoor ecological landscape.

There are now 38 giant pandas at the center, which covers more than 30 hectares with has a forest cover of 95 percent, according to Yu Jianqiu, deputy head of the center.

Yu said he held that the construction of the park is designed to educate the general public about the endangered species and facilitate more contact with the animals so as to step up their protection.

There are approximately 1,000 giant pandas living in the wild, most of which live in the large mountain ranges in western China's Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces.

(Xinhua News Agency April 28, 2003)