China plans to send a new pair of giant pandas to the San Diego Zoo, renewing its longstanding gesture of friendship toward the United States after a recalling nearly all the iconic bears on loan to U.S. zoos as relations soured between the two nations.
The China Wildlife Conservation Association has signed co-operation agreements with zoos in San Diego and Madrid, and is in talks with zoos in Washington, D.C., and Vienna, the Chinese organization said, describing the deals as a new round of collaboration on panda conservation.
San Diego Zoo officials told The Associated Press that if all permits and other requirements are approved, two bears, a male and a female, are expected to arrive as early as the end of summer, about five years after the zoo sent its last pandas back to China.
“We’re very excited and hopeful,” said Megan Owen of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and vice-president of Wildlife Conservation Science. “They’ve expressed a tremendous amount of enthusiasm to re-initiate panda co-operation starting with the San Diego Zoo.”
China may send relative of past residents
Zoos typically pay a fee of $1 million US a year for two pandas, with the money earmarked for China’s conservation efforts, according to a 2022 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service.
In November, Chinese President Xi Jinping raised hopes his country would start sending pandas to the U.S. again after he and President Joe Biden convened in Northern California for their first face-to-face meeting in a year and pledged to try to reduce tensions.
China is considering a pair that includes a female descendent of Bai Yun and Gao Gao, two of the zoo’s former residents, said Owen, an expert in panda behaviour who has worked in San Diego and China. Bai Yun, who was born in captivity in China, lived at the zoo for more than 20 years and gave birth to six cubs there.
She and her son were the zoo’s last pandas, returning to China in 2019. Gao Gao was born in the wild in China and lived at the San Diego Zoo from 2003 to 2018 before being sent back.
Decades of conservation efforts in the wild and study in captivity saved the giant panda species from extinction, increasing its population from fewer than 1,000 at one time to more than 1,800 in the wild and captivity.
The black-and-white bears have long been the symbol of the U.S.-China friendship since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., in 1972, ahead of the normalization of bilateral relations.