Brian McDonald
The last U.S. zoo with pandas in its care hopes to say goodbye to four giant bears this fall.
Zoo Atlanta is preparing to return panda parents Lun Lun and Yang Yang to China, along with their U.S.-born twins, Ya Lun and Xi Lun, zoo officials said Friday. There is no specific date for the transfer yet, they said, but it will likely take place between October and December.
Kate Brumback/AP
Atlanta’s four pandas were the last in the United States since the Washington National Zoo returned three pandas to China last November. Those pandas flew to China on November 8 and 24 later they disembarked 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 son named Xiao Qi Ji, who also returned to China. Forklifts had to transport the giant pandas to the airport in trucks, where they boarded a special flight with “snacks” including about 220 pounds of bamboo.
Pandas were first sent to DC to save the species through breeding, and pairs have been kept at the zoo ever since.
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Other American zoos sent pandas back to China when loan agreements expired amid rising diplomatic tensions between the two nations. Besides the Atlanta and Washington D.C. zoos, the Memphis Zoo and San Diego Zoo were the only others in the U.S. to house giant pandas. Memphis returned its last surviving panda in April 2023. San Diego returned its pandas in 2019, more than three decades after the first pair arrived in 1987.
Atlanta welcomed Lun Lun and Yang Yang from China in 1999 as part of a 25-year loan deal that will soon expire.
Ya Lun and Xi Lun, born in 2016, are the youngest of the seven pandas born at Zoo Atlanta since their parents arrived. His siblings are already in the care of the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Center in China.
It’s possible that America will receive a new pair of pandas before the bears depart from 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 early 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. In the 1980s, pandas were briefly housed at the zoo, but the arrangement marks the first time pandas will reside at the San Francisco Zoo.
Zoo Atlanta officials said in a news release that they should be able to share “significant advance notice” before their pandas leave. As for the possibility of Atlanta hosting future pandas, “there have not yet been discussions with partners in China,” zoo officials said.
There are just over 1,800 pandas in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fundand although breeding programs have increased their numbers, the panda’s survival is still considered to be at serious risk.
Report contributed by Caitlin O’Kane.
