Special Bamboo Delivery for Yang Guang
On Tuesday 20th December Yang Guang received a ‘delivery for one’ from the City of Edinburgh Methodist Church, as a van loaded up with bamboo arrives with enough shoots to provide him with a delicious lunch.
Based at Nicolson Square, the church is one of the Zoo’s contingency networks of home-grown suppliers whose bamboo has been stringently assessed for freshness, quality and variety. When the Zoo recently found out the church now had to cut down their bamboo plant due to an imminent expansion, they were delighted to accept the bamboo as a lovely home-grown Scottish snack for the famous Chinese two.
Although 85% of Tian Tian (Sweetie) and Yang Guang’s (Sunshine) bamboo is sourced from a bamboo plantation in the Netherlands, and the other 15% grown at special sites around Edinburgh Zoo, a network of home-grown suppliers has been established just in case it’s needed, including the Earl of Glasgow’s Kelburn Castle Estate in Largs and Cornish estates famous for being the home of the UK’s bamboo furniture industry, to private households in Ratho and Helensburgh.
Rab Harden, Garden’s Team Leader for Edinburgh Zoo, says: “Although absolutely no problems exists with the pandas regular bamboo source, it seemed a shame to let great quality bamboo go to waste – especially when Yang Guang has such a big appetite! Although we wouldn’t accept any old bamboo, the City of Edinburgh Methodist Church’s supply had already passed stringent inspections and we were more than delighted to accept this gift.”
Munching their way through around 30kg of bamboo each per day, the bamboo delivered today is the equivalent of one meal for our male panda Yang Guang (Sunshine).
Source: RZSS Panda
