Sichuan's Giant Pandas find "New home" after the earthquake

Glorious scenery and attentive staff. Freshly prepared meals, delivered twice daily. Even the odd DVD. Nothing to do but eat, snooze – and, just occasionally, have sex.

Four of the victims were keepers at the famed Wolong reserve, close to the epicentre of the shock; several more staff members risked their lives saving the creatures they had reared. The breeding centre and surrounding sanctuary are home to about 150 pandas.

"It was very scary; the hills collapsed and cracks opened in the land," said Huang Yan, deputy director of research.

Pandas stopped eating and ran away when they heard the slightest sounds. To add to the keepers' concerns, many were pregnant. "One of them was Guo Guo, who was saved by us from under the rubble. We had to give her sedatives. We were extremely worried she would suffer a miscarriage," said Huang.

Keepers soothed the creatures by stroking their fur and increasing eye contact. They also moved them to a temporary home in Bifengxia – a smaller breeding centre across the province – where the results can be seen hard at play: 13 cubs awaiting a new home.

Their future base, just 10km from Wolong's former centre, will include 25 projects funded by Hong Kong at a total cost of 1.3bn yuan, plus 19 projects funded by the Chinese government, at 270m yuan. A special disease control centre will be built in a nearby city.

But while environmentalists praise the efforts made to protect the captive breeding programme, they fear that the wild pandas may be at risk from the wider rush to rebuild in the quake zone.

"Development isn't causing the best habitat to disappear but it is fragmenting habitat. You lose connectivity and have risks from issues like traffic and human actions or different types of invasive species," said Marc Brody, who has worked with environmentalists in the region since 1993 and founded the US-China Environment Fund's Panda Mountain project. "Some things could be more sustainable and provide opportunities for people to care for and help restore the panda habitat."

"We were very worried about them after the earthquake. Pandas are considered a treasure of the nation and the species is so rare," said Zhang Yi, who lives in nearby Ya'an City and had brought guests to admire the cubs.

"Besides," he added, "they're very cute. Everybody loves pandas."