The last American zoo with pandas expects to say goodbye to the four giant bears this fall.
Zoo Atlanta is preparing to return panda parents Lun Lun and Yang Yang to China, along with their American-born twins Ya Lun and Xi Lun, zoo officials said Friday. There is no specific date yet for the transfer, they said, but it will likely take place between October and December.
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The four pandas from Atlanta are the last in the United States since the National Zoo in Washington brought three pandas back to China last November. Those pandas flew to China on November 8 and 24 later landed in Chengdu, where the Chinese National Zoo is located. Mei Xiang and Tian Tian were loaned out for a research and breeding program. In 2020, the couple had a baby named Xiao Qi Ji, who also returned to China. Forklifts had to take the giant pandas in trucks to the airport, where they boarded a special flight with ‘snacks’ including about 220 pounds of bamboo.
Pandas were first sent to DC to save the species by breeding them, and pairs have been kept at the zoo ever since.
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Other U.S. zoos have returned pandas to China as loan agreements expired amid heightened diplomatic tensions between the two nations. Besides the zoos in Atlanta and Washington DC, the Memphis Zoo and the San Diego Zoo were the only others in the US to house giant pandas. Memphis returned its last surviving panda in April 2023. San Diego returned its pandas in 2019, more than thirty years after the first pair arrived in 1987.
Atlanta received Lun Lun and Yang Yang from China in 1999 as part of a 25-year loan deal that will soon expire.
Born in 2016, Ya Lun and Xi Lun are the youngest of seven pandas born at Zoo Atlanta since their parents arrived. Their siblings are already under the care of China’s Chengdu Research Center of Giant Panda Breeding.
It’s possible America could welcome a new panda pair before the bears leave Atlanta. The San Diego Zoo said last month that staff members recently traveled to China to meet pandas Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, who could arrive in California as soon as this summer. San Francisco Zoo too recently signed in April a memorandum of understanding with the China Wildlife Conservation Association to bring pandas to the zoo. Pandas were briefly housed at the zoo in the 1980s, but the agreement marks the first time pandas will stay at the San Francisco Zoo.
Zoo Atlanta officials said in a news release that they should be able to share “important advance notice” before their pandas leave. As to whether Atlanta will house pandas in the future, “no discussions have yet taken place with partners in China,” zoo officials said.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, there are just over 1,800 pandas left in the wild, and although breeding programs have increased their numbers, the panda’s survival is still considered critically endangered.
Reporting contributed by Caitlin O’Kane.
