It is expected that the new pair of giant pandas will arrive in Macau before July. In the meantime, Macau panda Kai Kai has a great opportunity to be selected to participate in a captive breeding programme on the Mainland.

Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) administrative committee member Leong Kun Fong has announced that the government is anticipating the arrival of a new pair of pandas from the Mainland during the first half of the year. He also said that Mainland authorities were still in the process of deciding which pandas would be best suited for Macau's subtropical climate and would pre-select several panda pairs, following which local government officials would choose which two they would prefer to be sent to Macau.

President Xi Jinping said in December during a visit to Macau that the central government would give Macau another two pandas following the demise in June last year of one of the pandas the central government had previously gifted to Macau on the occasion of the 10^th anniversary of the establishment of the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR). Male Kai Kai and female Xin Xin arrived in Macau from their birthplace in Sichuan on 18^th December 2010. Xin Xin died of acute renal failure and related ailments last year.

Asked about Kai Kai's fate, Mr. Leong said that as Kai Kai is of breeding age the local government would send him to the Mainland in the hope that he could find a suitable mate. He also said that as six-year-old Kai Kai is in good health he was likely to be selected for the breeding programme, adding that if Kai Kai was selected for the programme he was unlikely to return to Macau.

The central government regards giant pandas – known as 'big bear cats' in Chinese - as a national treasure, and are classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a 'conservation-reliant endangered species'. About 1,600 giant pandas are believed to live in the wild, while around 300 live in captivity in China and abroad.