Panda Diplomacy Resumes at San Diego Zoo
Almost all of the giant pandas on loan from China have been returned to their homeland as the loan agreements expire, with the last US facility, Zoo Atlanta, scheduled to return their gentle giants by year’s end. But this week the San Diego Zoo has announced it will soon welcome a new pair of pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao.
“Yun Chuan is a nearly five-year-old male panda,” the zoo says in a press release. “He is described as mild-mannered, gentle and lovable.” He also has an inherited connection to the San Diego Zoo because his mother, Zhen Zhen, was born there in 2007. His grandmother, Bai Yun, lived at the zoo for 23 years (hence his given name, Yun; “Chuan” refers to Sichuan Province, where he was born).
Xin Bao, the female, is almost four. “She is described as a gentle and witty introvert with a sweet round face and big ears. Her name means a ‘new treasure of prosperity and abundance.’”
The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has a nearly 30-year partnership with conservation institutions in China, and it’s a good thing their connections are in better shape than some other Sino-American relationships. The partners focus on protecting and recovering giant pandas and their habitats, the bamboo forests of central China.
The Alliance and their Chinese counterparts have developed a giant-panda milk formula and other neonatal care strategies that they say have increased survival rates for nursery-reared cubs from 5% to 95%. Their efforts in the wild have also improved conditions for pandas, enough so that the International Union for Conservation downgraded the panda’s “endangered” status to merely “vulnerable” in 2021.
“Our partnership over the decades has served as a powerful example of how, when we work together, we can achieve what was once thought to be impossible,” declares Megan Owen, vice president of conservation science at the Alliance. “We have a shared goal of creating a sustainable future for giant pandas.”
The San Diego Zoo expects to welcome the new guys this summer.
Photo credit: Andrew James / San Diego Zoo
