HK's new "handover" pandas to arrive in late April

HONG KONG, Mar 9 (Reuters) Hong Kong will get its second pair of giant pandas from China in late April to mark the 10th anniversary of the former British colony's return to Chinese rule, officials said today.

The pair will be chosen by experts from 15 pandas born in 2005 at China's foremost Giant Panda Conservation and Research centre in Wolong, Sichuan province.

The director of the research centre Zhao Xuemin said a fertile, healthy and beautiful pair of the en1dangered pandas would be given to Hong Kong, in the hope they would breed.

Hong Kong already has a pair of giant pandas, An An and Jia Jia, who arrived in 1999.

The giant panda is one of the world's most endangered species and is found only in China. An estimated 1,000 live in the southwestern province of Sichuan, and in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces in the northwest.

REUTERS DKA VC1532