CHENGDU - Residents of Southwest China's Sichuan province on Friday found the body of a wild panda at a hydropower station after days of rainstorms triggered a mudslide at a nature reserve.

The panda, aged between one and three, had been dead for two days, judging from the body found at the sluice gate of the Gengda Hydropower Station near the Wolong nature reserve, said Du Jun, deputy director of the reserve.

It is unclear as yet how the panda ended up in the waterway and the cause of its death has yet to be confirmed, Du said.

He Xiao'an, a publicity official with the reserve, said since the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, mudslides often hit the reserve during rainy seasons, damaging the ecological system and threatening the survival of wild pandas.

Currently, about 1,600 giant pandas live in the wild, mostly in the mountains of Sichuan.

The Wolong National Natural Reserve, covering 200,000 hectares in Sichuan's Wenchuan County, was founded in 1963 as the "home of the giant panda".

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