Start forming a line. China’s pandas are making a San Diego comeback.
The San Diego Zoo told The Associated Press on Wednesday that if all permits and other requirements are approved, a male and a female panda would be sent here as early as the end of summer.
In 2019, amid much pomp and sadness, the Balboa Park zoo saw its last pandas sent to China.
“We’re very excited and hopeful,” Megan Owen of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance told the AP. “They’ve expressed a tremendous amount of enthusiasm to re-initiate panda cooperation starting with the San Diego Zoo.”
China is considering a pair that includes a female descendent of Bai Yun and Gao Gao, two former zoo pandas, Owen told the AP.
The zoo confirmed that it had signed a cooperative agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association and filed a permit application with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria hailed the “giant news.”
“I’m grateful to @sandiegozoo and the China Wildlife Conservation Association for continuing our successful partnership to protect the iconic and beloved pandas,” he wrote on X.
Bai Yun, born in captivity in China, lived at the zoo for more than 20 years and gave birth to six cubs here. She and her son were the zoo’s last pandas and returned to China in 2019.
Gao Gao was born in the wild in China and lived at the San Diego Zoo from 2003 to 2018 before being sent back, the AP noted.
In January, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that to establish understanding and cooperation between China and the United States is “no longer an option … but an imperative” for the world.
Wang said “preparations are ready for a giant panda return to California within the year” but didn’t reveal whether they would go to San Diego or San Francisco.
He made the comments during a lavish banquet marking the 45th anniversary of the two countries establishing diplomatic relations in the capital city of Beijing.
Last November, China’s President Xi Jinping hinted at a return of the pandas to the United States as a goodwill gesture, which the White House said would be welcomed back.
The giant pandas in Memphis, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., returned to China last year, and some feared that China would stop lending pandas to American zoos because of the tensions between the two countries.
But Xi raised hope for California in November when he told an audience in San Francisco that China was ready to continue cooperating with the U.S. on pandas and “do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians.”
