HONG KONG (CNN) -- Hong Kong has been hard at work building an appropriate home to a gift from China -- a pair of endangered giant pandas, Jia Jia and An An. The two are expected to arrive on the island this month.

But the gift has come under fire from animal rights groups, which say the black and white animals should stay in their natural habitat.

"Hong Kong is very humid and has a tropical or sub-tropical climate, which is not suitable for the giant panda," said Plato Yip, assistant director of the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

Architect Tao Ho said he has taken that into consideration in his design for the pandas' enclosure in Hong Kong's Ocean Park. He traveled to China's Wolong panda reserve in the southwestern Sichuan province to get a feel for how the animals live.

"So I walked into the panda's land to get the feeling, and when I came back I came up with the idea to build a simulated environment for the panda," Ho said.

At a cost of HK $80 million (US $10.4 million) -- split between the Hong Kong Jockey Club and Ocean Park -- the pandas' new home will be kept at 68 degrees Fahrenheit around the clock with humidity at 50 to 60 percent. And in the winter, fresh, cool air will circulate freely.

Only about 1,000 giant pandas survive in the wild. The declining population is largely due to human encroachment into their territory and deforestation of their natural range. The animals are considered national treasures in China.

Reuters contributed to this report.