San Diego Zoo officials announced Monday that they’ve met the two giant pandas in China slated to be lent to the zoo — with the animals’ arrival expected to occur by summer.
Yun Chuan, a male panda who is almost 5 years old, and female Xin Bao will be relocated to San Diego once federal regulators and Chinese officials approve permits associated with the breeding loan.
“It was an honor to see Yun Chuan and Xin Bao in person and meet our conservation partners caring for them at the Wolong and Bifengxia Panda Bases,” Megan Owen, vice president of conservation science at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, said in a statement. “Yun Chuan’s lineage has deep connections to the San Diego Zoo and we’re excited by the prospect of caring for them.”
Zoo officials met with their counterparts with the China Wildlife Conservation Association to see the panda pair and to discuss prospective research programs and collaboration on specialized care and nutrition programs. The pandas’ arrival date has not yet been set, although officials are hopeful it will occur this summer.
Yun Chuan — described by zoo officials as mild-mannered, gentle and lovable — is from the Wolong Shenshuping Panda Base and already has links to San Diego. He is the offspring of Zhen Zhen, a panda born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007 to parents Bai Yun and Gao Gao. (Yun Chuan is pronounced yoon chu-an.)
Officials hope that he will produce babies with Xin Bao, a female panda who is nearly 4 years old. She was born at the Wolong Shenshuping Panda Base and is described as a gentle and witty introvert. Her name means a “new treasure of prosperity and abundance.” (Xin Bao is pronounced sing bao.)
“Our conservation partners in China shared photographs and personality traits of Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, but meeting them in person was so special. It’s inspiring as people from around the world come together to conserve, protect, and care for these special bears, and we can’t wait to welcome them to San Diego,” Owen said.
The financial terms of the loan were not disclosed. In 1996, the zoo originally agreed to pay $1 million per year to China for a panda pair, an amount that later was reduced.
China also recently agreed to lend pandas to the San Francisco Zoo. Those animals are expected to arrive in 2025.
China is home to the only natural habitat for pandas. Beijing lends the animals to other countries as a tool for diplomacy and wildlife conservation. Only four pandas are left in the U.S., all at the Atlanta Zoo under a loan set to expire late this year.
This will be the third time China has lent giant pandas to the San Diego Zoo — first in 1987 for six months when Basi and Yuan Yuan were sent. Then in 1996, two more pandas, Bai Yun and Shi Shi, came as part of a breeding loan under a panda research program.
Bai Yun and Shi Shi produced a cub, Hua Mei, who became a worldwide celebrity as millions tuned in to the zoo’s “panda cam” to watch her grow. She was the first American-born panda to survive into adulthood and was relocated to the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in China in 2004.
Shi Shi was replaced by Gao Gao in 2003, and he fathered five more cubs in San Diego.
Giant pandas haven’t been in San Diego since 2019.
Several other U.S. zoos have cared for pandas over the years. The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., received its first pandas from the Chinese in 1972 — Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing — after President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China. Ling Ling had five cubs but none survived. In 2000, the National Zoo received two more pandas, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, under a 10-year agreement that was renewed three times. Mei Xiang gave birth to seven cubs, four that survived.
San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance officials say their decades-long conservation partnerships with Chinese institutions helped lead to critical findings on giant panda reproductive behavior and physiology, nutritional requirements, habitat needs and genetic research. They were able to develop formula for baby pandas and came up with improvements in neonatal conservation techniques that increased survival rates for nursery-reared cubs from 5 percent to 95 percent.
The zoo also had the first successful artificial insemination of a panda mother outside of China and aided Chinese scientists in tracking wild pandas using GPS technology at the Foping National Nature Reserve.
Giant pandas were on the endangered species list for more than 25 years, but in 2017 the International Union for Conservation of Nature downgraded their status to “vulnerable” on its global list of species at risk of extinction after the number of pandas in the wild increased. About 1,800 pandas live in the wild, according to the National Zoo.
Zoo officials say work still needs to be done to ensure pandas remain on the path to recovery with healthy populations and flourishing ecosystems. They say their conservation collaboration aims to improve population health and resilience in some of the smallest and most isolated panda populations, which remain vulnerable.
“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,” Owen said. “We have a shared goal of creating a sustainable future for giant pandas.”
