Panda enclosure opens to the public in Singapore

The Giant Pandas, Kai Kai and Jia Jia, will make their public debut today.

They are on a 10-year loan from the Chinese government to mark two decades of strong ties between Beijing and Singapore.

It is also a joint collaboration between the China Wildlife Conservation Association and Wildlife Reserve Singapore to raise public awareness of wildlife conservation and develop a breeding program for these endangered animals.

The two pandas have passed their one-month quarantine and are now living separately in their own air-conditioned enclosures inside the Giant Pandas Forest.

The state-of-the-art enclosure is part of the brand new River Safari Wildlife Park of the Singapore Zoo.

According to zookeepers the pandas have settled in and adapted well to their new home and their new diet.

Assistant Director of Zoology at River Safari Ang Cheng Chye says they were not sure the pandas would take to Singapore's bamboo.

"Initial concern was would they be feeding on our local bamboos, so what we did was brought in three days worth of bamboo from China and then while they were feeding on those we would introduce our local bamboos. But at the end of the day, when they don't have the first choice bamboos, they will eat the second choice. So now they are actually feeding all our locally grown bamboos."

Four types of bamboos are planted in the enclosure.

They are eating at least two of the four species of the local bamboos, and particularly like the sulphur bamboo, which is thicker and easier to hold.

To ease the transition, bamboos from China were flown in with the pandas to help them acclimatise to their new environment.

The local bamboos were gradually introduced to their diet and fortunately both pandas took to it almost immediately.

The pandas are fed four times throughout the day inside the enclosure and once at night in the sleeping den.

The two pandas consume about 30kg of bamboo each daily. Each one also gets apples and also about 300kg of carrots daily.

While Kai Kai is very keen on eating, Jia Jia is the more active panda. She likes to wander around the enclosure, roll around and climb trees.

The panda pair arrived in Singapore in early September, 2012. They received a welcome usually reserved for pop stars and sports heroes.

And their new home is a state-of-the-art affair.

The Giant Panda Forest is a 1,500 square metre (4,900 square feet) bio-dome built at a cost of SGD 8.6 million (RM21.46 million).

It has been designed and landscaped to simulate the giant pandas' natural habitat in the rugged highlands in Sichuan province, China.

The largest of its kind in Southeast Asia, the Giant Panda Forest features a roof constructed of double glazed glass alternated with insulated metal, which allows in plenty of sunlight.

According to the designer, director of Exhibit Design and Development at River Safari Cham Tud Yinn, there were many challenges in creating the enclosure.

"We are trying to create an environment that is 18 to 20 degrees celsius in a tropical island so we basically have to air condition this place. But we also want natural sunlight to come in for the plants. So it's a fine balance between allowing too much sunlight entering and cooling this place down. So we did a lot of computer simulation to find out if this is bright enough and in the end we chose a glass roof with kind of a printed motif on it to reduce the light entering as well. So we don't have to spend too much energy cooling this space."

Because the enclosure is essentially a large air-conditioned building with a clear roof for plants to grow and survive inside, Cham says his engineers needed to find an energy efficient way to let the tropical sun through while ensuring the temperature inside remained cool.

The solution was a glass roof with a printed motif on it to reduce excessive light entering.

This will also help reduce the energy in cooling the enclosure.

The dome-shaped glass roof allows the structure to stand on its own without the need for interior central columns for support.

The air-conditioning unit is also run by an extremely energy efficient water-chilled system suited for cooling such large area.

The vents are positioned in a way that cool air remains in the lower portion of the enclosure while hot air is allowed to rise and escapes, thus reducing energy costs.

The walls are also in double cavity and some are also equipped with double paned glass to make it a more energy efficient enclosure.

Cham says he his design has succeed if the pandas thrive in this enclosure.

"It boils down to the naturalness of this exhibit. If you look at other panda exhibit around the world, they tend to be a bit stuck. Here right from day one, we want to ensure it will be as much greenness, as much 'foresty' as possible. So we put in a lot of effort to plant real bamboos and protect them from the pandas. If you look closely, some of the bamboos here are artificial, they are actually metal pole protecting the real bamboos against the pandas."

The design team have converted the indoor space into a forest with live plants and rock formations similar to those found in the pandas' natural habitat.

Water features like waterfalls and dipping pools where pandas can drink, have been added to the enclosure.

Even the size of the enclosure has been carefully considered and, Cham, says, it exceeds the minimum standard size stipulated for this type of enclosure by American Zoo Association (AZA) and World Aquarium and Zoo Association (WAZA).

The Giant Panda Forest exhibit includes an interactive display with fun facts about panda diet and habits.

A research centre with a laboratory is scheduled to open which will focus on the breeding program and conservation of the giant pandas.

Jia Jia's reproductive cycle will be monitored closely.

But it is still too early to carry out any breeding program, as the four-year old Jia Jia is still a year away from sexual maturity.

And, as Assistant Director of Zoology at River Safari Ang Cheng Chye says, any attempt to mate pandas in the equatorial tropics is not without its own challenges.

"Their estrous (a female being in heat) is actually triggered by the rise of temperature from winter to spring and we don't have that in Singapore. So we are curious to see, waiting to see whether she will come into estrous and when she will come into estrous as well. So that will be the first two things we have to sort out first before we can think about mating them. Because if she doesn't come into estrous there's no way we can mate the two pandas."

In the meantime there is a waiting public for the pandas to meet.

After years of preparations the enclosure is due to open today.