4 Giant Pandas Born on China Reserve

China said last week that four giant pandas have been born this year on a nature reserve in central China’s Gansu province.

The cubs are reported doing well, the official New China News Agency reported. The births are an unusual event among pandas, which are notoriously reluctant to breed, both in the wild and in captivity.

“Other giant pandas in the reserve are reported quite fit as they have sufficient food,” the agency said. It did not say precisely when the animals were born at the Baishuijiang nature Reserve.

Officials on the reserve said the famine that struck the panda population in 1983--when their staple food, the arrow bamboo, began to flower and wither--may be coming to an end.

“Workers in the reserve have found that new bamboo shoots are growing well this year on 3,500 of the 8,250 acres on which the bamboo withered previously,” the agency reported.