California’s governor flew in for the young bears’ debut. Throngs of media gathered inside the zoo, while the city of San Diego warned of traffic jams ahead of the much-anticipated event on Thursday. The San Diego zoo rolled out the red carpet for the first public showing of its newest residents: two giant pandas, the first to enter the US in two decades.
For years, the Chinese government has loaned pandas to zoos around the world in a practice called “panda diplomacy”. The fuzzy ambassadors have long been a symbol of the US-China friendship, ever since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National zoo in Washington DC in 1972. As relations soured between the two countries, China stopped renewing panda loans to US zoos.
But last year, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, said he was “ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation” and pledged to reduce tensions between the two countries. Only four other giant pandas currently reside in the United States, all at the zoo in Atlanta. The Smithsonian’s National zoo will receive a new pair of pandas by the end of the year after its last bears returned to China last November.
As part of the loan agreement, US zoos typically pay $1m a year toward China’s wildfire conservation efforts, and all cubs born in the US must return to China by age four. In San Diego, the arrival of both pandas at the end of June came as a big relief. The city’s previous pandas left in 2018 and 2019.
Thursday.
