Worst fears confirmed in habitats

There are around 1,600 pandas in the wild, according to figures from the State Forestry Administration. The pandas live in 67 nature reserves in western China's Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces - 1,200 in Sichuan, 300 in Shaanxi and 100 in Gansu.

The administration estimated in June that the panda habitat area affected by the earthquake reached 1.96 million hectares, or 83 percent of the country's total giant panda habitat areas, according to remote sensing surveys.

Twenty-seven out of the 40 giant panda nature reserves in Sichuan and eight out of the 20 nature reserves in Shaanxi were damaged.