Giant pandas Yun Chuan and Xin Bao have completed their long voyage from China, making it safely to their new home at the San Diego Zoo.
As KTLA News in Los Angeles reports, officials with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance confirmed their arrival to local media outlets last Friday morning, adding that the pair will spend the next several weeks acclimating to their new home in a private habitat.
When Will We Be Able to See Them?
The giant pandas will not be viewable to the public for several weeks, said Megan Owen, vice president of Wildlife Conservation Science for the Wildlife Alliance.
The panda pair must first be monitored closely by expert wildlife health and care teams, who will determine when the bears are ready to meet the public. “They’ll begin an acclimation period,” Owen explained prior to their arrival. “That acclimation period is going to tell us how they are doing, how they’re settling in, and then we’ll be able to share an opening date.”
Updates on when and how to see the giant pandas at the San Diego Zoo can be monitored on the park’s giant panda information webpage.
Meet the Pandas
The two bears are Yun Chuan, a 4-year-old male, and Xin Bao, a 3-year-old female. Yun Chuan’s mother, Zhen Zhen, was actually born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007.
Yun Chuan is “pretty outgoing and lively,” said Huang Shan, a giant panda caretaker at the Ya’an facility. “He likes interacting with the caretakers and often runs over when he hears their footsteps.”
Xin Bao is “a bit more introverted, but she’s very smart and alert,” Huang said. “She pays close attention to sounds like birds chirping and insects buzzing.”
During their quarantine period in China, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao were provided with medical care and training, including learning commands in English. They also had to be prepared for their 7,000-mile plane journey, getting used to spending time in their crates.
They have been accompanied by caretakers and veterinarians from both China and the U.S., including Americans who came to China earlier and “got to know the pandas well,” Huang said. The Chinese team will spend about three months in San Diego helping the pandas settle in.
Research and Conservation
The zoo’s wildlife teams hope to engage in research and conservation efforts to learn more about issues of panda health, including well-being and reproductive output.
In the U.S., they will have to get used to different bamboo varieties from the ones in Sichuan — which may be especially difficult for Yun Chuan, a picky eater. “It might take them some time initially to adjust to the new diet from the American side,” Huang said. “They may not eat as well in the beginning, but we believe that because the San Diego Zoo has previously fed our pandas, they will adapt quickly.”
In preparation for their arrival, the panda habitat at the San Diego Zoo was “completely renovated,” said Megan Owen, vice president of conservation science at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. It has grown several times in size and had “a great deal of complexity” added to it. “We’ve included topographical features that are similar to what you might see here,” she said in Ya’an, such as steep hillside, lots of trees and other foliage.
Zoo officials said they also hope to focus on research areas that could further aid the recovery of giant panda populations, such as human-wildlife coexistence, climate change impact mitigation and how technology can be leveraged to protect pandas and the health of their native habitats.
The panda pair is the first to enter the U.S. in 21 years, officials said.
A Matter of Diplomacy
According to NBC News, several pandas living in the U.S. returned to China last year, including three from the National Zoo in Washington, leaving the four bears at Zoo Atlanta as the only pandas in the U.S. With the loan agreement for them expiring this year, there were concerns that the U.S. might end up with none of the bears after decades of panda diplomacy with China.
Hopes were raised in November when Chinese President Xi Jinping suggested during a visit to California that more pandas could be on the way to the U.S., and specifically San Diego. “We hopped on the very next flight we could and came over and had some meetings to learn what that timing might look like,” said Paul Baribault, president and chief executive of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, which runs the zoo.
More pandas are expected to arrive at other U.S. zoos, including in Washington and San Francisco.
So this return is definitely a step forward for relations between the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies, as they try to repair ties strained by disputes over trade, technology, the status of Taiwan and other issues. “This is a wonderful way to engage our two countries in something that is undeniably positive,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said.
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Photo Credit: Martinez de la Varga / Shutterstock.com