When District residents said goodbye to the pandas last November, one bamboo farm in Warren County never stopped producing food for their anticipated return one day.
“We are singly responsible for the recovery of giant pandas,” Mike Maslanka, the head of nutritional science at the National Zoo, said.
The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, located in Front Royal, Virginia, is about 70 miles from the National Zoo.
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The bamboo is grown on the 3,200 acre campus, where the pandas will eat roughly 100 pounds of bamboo each every day.
In addition to the campus, more than 20 nearby landowners grow bamboo for the animals as well. Maslanka said early in his career, the team ran out of bamboo and partnered with local landowners to maintain supply which he said “ was terrible on so many fronts.”
“Typically, we're looking for more than an acre of solid bamboo,” Maslanka said. “We're looking for bamboo that's safe for animals. Also safe for our staff in order to access and harvest, and that is reasonably close.”
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Maslanka said the team has been focused on improving giant panda diets and increasing the amount they’re feeding them here and around the world.
Correction (Weds., Oct. 16, 2024 at 6:44 a.m.): An earlier version of this story misstated Mike Maslanka's name. The article has been updated, and we regret the error.
