SAN DIEGO (AP) — China plans to ship a brand new pair of giant pandas to the San Diego Zoo, renewing its longstanding gesture of friendship towards america after practically all the enduring bears on mortgage to U.S. zoos have been despatched again as relations soured between the 2 nations.
San Diego Zoo officers instructed The Related Press that if all permits and different necessities are authorized, two bears, a male and a feminine, are anticipated to reach by the top of summer season, about 5 years after the zoo despatched its final pandas again to China.
“We’re very excited and hopeful,” stated Megan Owen of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and vice chairman of Wildlife Conservation Science. “They’ve expressed an incredible quantity of enthusiasm to re-initiate panda cooperation beginning with the San Diego Zoo.”
The China Wildlife Conservation Affiliation stated Thursday it additionally signed cooperation agreements with the zoo within the Spanish capital of Madrid, and is in talks with zoos in Washington, D.C., and Vienna.
AP Picture/Lenny Ignelzi, File
The partnership will embrace analysis on illness prevention and habitat safety, and contribute to China’s nationwide panda park development, the group stated.
“We stay up for additional increasing the analysis outcomes on the conservation of endangered species corresponding to big pandas, and selling mutual understanding and friendship amongst peoples via the brand new spherical of worldwide cooperation,” Chinese language Overseas Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated in Beijing.
Fears over the future of so-called panda diplomacy escalated final 12 months when the zoos in Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tennessee, returned their pandas to China, leaving solely 4 pandas in america, all on the zoo in Atlanta. That mortgage settlement expires later this 12 months.
However in November, Chinese language President Xi Jinping raised hopes his nation would begin sending pandas to the U.S. once more after he and President Joe Biden convened in Northern California for his or her first face-to-face meeting in a year and pledged to attempt to scale back tensions.
China is contemplating a pair that features a feminine descendent of Bai Yun and Gao Gao, two of the zoo’s former residents, stated Owen, an skilled in panda habits who has labored in San Diego and China.
Bai Yun, who was born in captivity in China, lived on the zoo for greater than 20 years and gave start to 6 cubs there. She and her son have been the zoo’s final pandas and returned to China in 2019.
Gao Gao was born within the wild in China and lived on the San Diego Zoo from 2003 to 2018 earlier than being despatched again.
A long time of conservation efforts within the wild and examine in captivity saved the large panda species from extinction, rising its inhabitants from fewer than 1,000 at one time to greater than 1,800 within the wild and captivity.
The black-and-white bears have lengthy been the image of the U.S.-China friendship since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the Nationwide Zoo in Washington, D.C., in 1972, forward of the normalization of bilateral relations. China later loaned pandas to zoos to assist breed cubs and increase the inhabitants.
Zoos sometimes pay a charge of $1 million a 12 months for 2 pandas, with the cash earmarked for China’s conservation efforts, in accordance with a 2022 report by America’s Congressional Analysis Service.
The U.S., Spain and Austria have been among the many first nations to work with China on panda conservation, and 28 pandas have been born in these nations, China’s official Xinhua Information Company stated.
Calls for for the return of big pandas, generally known as China’s “nationwide treasure,” grew among the many Chinese language public as unproven allegations that U.S. zoos mistreated the pandas flooded Chinese language social media.
Many mortgage agreements have been for 10 years and sometimes have been prolonged properly past. However negotiations final 12 months to increase the agreements or ship extra pandas didn’t produce outcomes. China watchers speculated that Beijing was gradually pulling its pandas from Western nations due to deteriorating diplomatic relations with the U.S. and different nations.
Then on Nov. 15, 2023, per week after the Nationwide Zoo’s pandas departed for China, Xi spoke at a dinner in downtown San Francisco with American enterprise executives and signaled that more pandas might be sent. He stated he realized the San Diego Zoo and folks in California “very a lot stay up for welcoming pandas again.”
“I used to be instructed that many American individuals, particularly youngsters, have been actually reluctant to say goodbye to the pandas and went to the zoo to see them off,” Xi stated.
The San Diego Zoo continued to work with their Chinese language counterparts even after it not had any pandas.
Owen stated China is especially thinking about exchanging data on the zoo’s profitable breeding of pandas in captivity. Big pandas are troublesome to breed partly as a result of the feminine’s reproductive window is extraordinarily slim, lasting solely 48 to 72 hours every year.
Bai Yun’s first cub, Hua Mei, was additionally the primary panda born via synthetic insemination to outlive into maturity outdoors of China, and would go on to supply 12 cubs on her personal after she was despatched to China.
Bai Yun, in the meantime, remained on the zoo the place she gave start to 2 extra females and three males. With cameras in her den, researchers monitored her, contributing to the understanding of maternal care habits, Owen stated.
“We now have quite a lot of institutional data and capability from our final cooperative settlement, which we can parlay into this subsequent chapter, in addition to coaching the subsequent era of panda conservationists,” she stated.
Chinese language consultants would journey with the bears and spend months in San Diego, Owen stated.
She stated the return of the bears just isn’t solely good for San Diego however the big panda’s restoration as a species.
“We do discuss panda diplomacy on a regular basis,” Owen stated. “Diplomacy is a essential a part of conservation in any variety of contexts. …. If we will’t be taught to work collectively, you realize, in generally troublesome conditions or conditions which can be fully out of the management of conservationists, then we’re not going to succeed.”
Related Press author Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
