The Xiluodu Hydropower Station, China's second largest next only to the Three Gorges water control project, would not disturb the giant pandas living around the dam site, zoologists and environmentalists believe.

Located in Xiluodu Gorge on the lower reach of Jinsha River between Leibo county of Sichuan Province and Yongshan county of Yunnan Province, both in southwest China, the project is designed to have a total installed capacity of 12.6 million kilowatts.

Fifty kilometers from the hydropower station is Mamize Nature Reserve, in which about 10 giant pandas live.

The 38,800-hectare-nature reserve, called "gene pool of subtropical animal and plant", is also home to red pandas, leopards, takins and some other animals and plants under the state protection.

"The hydropower station will help increase humidity in nearby areas," said Jinaguji, director of Mamize Nature Reserve.

"It is good for giant pandas, because humid climate will boost vegetation."

About 1,800 hectares of bamboo, giant panda's main food, grow over an altitude of 2,000 meters in the nature reserve," Jinaguji said.

"However, the power-station-incurred rise of water level in the two tributaries of Jinsha River, which flow through the reserve, will not be high enough to affect the growth of giant panda's food," he said.

"The power station will cause the temperature to go down in the reserve," Yu Jianqiu, a giant panda expert, said, adding that "Giant panda prefers cool weather, and the weather change is in favor of them."

Giant pandas, said to have been around when dinosaurs roamed on earth, are cited as a "national treasure" of China. A total of 1,596 giant pandas now live in the world, mostly in high mountains of China's southwest and western provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu.

"We pay much attention to environmental protection," Wang Wei, a senior engineer of the hydropower project, said, "We would try our best not to disturb the ecological system along the Jinsha River valley."

The project is expected to dam the Jinsha River in November 2007, and scheduled to be completed in 2015. It will take an estimated investment of 50.34 billion yuan (US$6.2 billion).

(Xinhua News Agency June 29, 2006)