China will send two giant pandas to Australia for 10 years as part of a joint research program, the Xinhua news agency said on Monday.
The four-year-old male panda Wang Wang, meaning "net" in Chinese, and three-year-old female panda Fu Ni, meaning "lucky girl", will start their trip on November 27 under a 2007 agreement between the countries.
The pandas survived the deadly earthquake that hit southwest China's Sichuan province in May 2008.
The Australian side earlier sent veterinaries and feeders of the two pandas to China for training. It also set up a 10-hectare bamboo planting base.
Giant pandas, known for being sexually inactive in captivity, are among the world's most endangered animals.
China started panda conservation in the 1950s. Through the combined efforts of locals, the WWF and the government, the number of giant pandas in China has increased by 1,000 since the 1970s. According to WWF research, there are about 1,600 pandas living in forests in China's Gansu, Sichuan and Shanxi provinces, and more than 200 living in captivity.
BEIJING, November 23 (RIA Novosti)
