Pandas, sharks and more -- an animal news roundup from today's Times

The eight young pandas evacuated during the recent earthquakes in China have become the Beijing Zoo's media darlings, Barbara Demick reports.

Visitors to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta can pay to swim with whale sharks, but some experts says the practice could be risky for the sharks, Richard Fausset reports.

Speaking of risk, some SoCal surfers are opting to take the risk of a swim in the shark-populated waters at a beach north of Ixtapa, Mexico, Pete Thomas reports.

President Bush urges offshore drilling in wildlife refuge areas, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger disagrees with tampering with California's coast.

Meanwhile, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a nonprofit coalition of hunting, fishing and other organizations, filed  a lawsuit against the Interior Department and the Bureau of Land Management in U.S. District Court in Washington, saying the government agency "failed unequivocally" to monitor and mitigate the effects of gas and oil drilling on wildlife in Wyoming, Tami Abdollah reports.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's refusal to let firms test for mad cow disease denies consumers a safety net, a Times editorial says.

-- Francisco Vara-Orta

Photo: Andy Wong/Associated Press