Kelsey Lambert, wearing an “I Love Pandas” T-shirt and holding a diary covered in pandas, was excited when she saw the real thing. She and her mother, Allison, traveled all the way from San Antonio, Texas, just to watch the National Zoo’s furry rock stars leisurely chew bamboo and roll around in the grass.
“It feels great,” Kelsey, 10, said Friday. “My mom always promised she would take me there one day. So, now that they’re leaving, we have to do it.”
The National Zoo’s three giant pandas – Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji – are due to return to China in early December, but there has been no public sign of a 50-year deal struck by former President Richard Nixon. The exchange agreement will continue.
Zoo National officials have remained tight-lipped on the prospects of renewing or extending the agreement, and repeated attempts to comment on the status of negotiations went unanswered. However, the zoo’s public stance is decidedly pessimistic – viewing the remaining months as the end of an era.The zoo just wrapped up a week of celebrations Panda Palooza: The Big Farewell.
The era of giant pandas at the National Zoo may be over, and veteran China watchers say it’s part of a larger trend. As diplomatic tensions rise between Beijing and some Western governments, China appears to be gradually withdrawing pandas from several Western zoos as agreements expire.
Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s U.S.-China Dialogue Program on Global Issues, calls the trend “punitive panda diplomacy,” noting that two other U.S. zoos have lost pandas in recent years, while zoos in Scotland and Australia It is also facing “punitive panda diplomacy”. Similar departures, with no sign of their loan agreement being renewed.
Beijing is currently loaning 65 giant pandas to 19 countries through a “cooperative research program” with the clear mission of better protecting vulnerable species. Giant pandas will return to China when they grow old, and their cubs will be sent to China when they are about three or four years old.
The San Diego Zoo returned giant pandas in 2019, and the last bear from the Memphis Zoo in Tennessee returned home earlier this year. The departure of the National Zoo bear means the only remaining giant panda in the United States is at Zoo Atlanta — and the lease agreement is set to expire at the end of next year.
Wilder said the Chinese may be “trying to send a signal.”
He listed a series of hot topics among Chinese Americans: the U.S. government’s sanctions on prominent Chinese citizens and officials; import restrictions on Chinese semiconductors; accusations that Chinese-made fentanyl floods U.S. cities; criticism of China’s ownership of the social media platform TikTok Doubtful; Chinese hot air balloons caused an uproar earlier this year when they floated over the United States.
Wilder said Beijing firmly believes that “NATO and the United States are uniting against China.”
Tensions over pandas have even spilled into the hallways of the U.S. Senate.Last week, Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman complained about China’s purchases of U.S. farmland, adding: “I mean, they Take back our pandas. You know, we should take back all their farmland. “
This hostility is shared, at least in part, by the Chinese public, where anti-American sentiment is rising. Those emotions developed into a perfect panda storm earlier this year, when Lele, a male giant panda on loan at the Memphis Zoo, died suddenly in February at the age of 24. Giant pandas usually live 15 to 20 years in the wild, but can often live to about 30 years in the wild under human care.
Lele’s unexpected death caused an uproar on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo, with widespread accusations that the Memphis Zoo mistreated the bear and its female companion Yaya. The campaign intensified when photos of Yaya looking dirty and haggard (by panda standards) circulated online. mottled fur.
Online petition at Change.org Demanding the return of Yaya Immediately claimed to be malnourished and denied proper medical care. Slogans such as “Panda’s life matters” have appeared on Chinese social media, along with emotional memes pleading with authorities to rescue the bear.One particular meme depicts Poor Yaya Staring at a plane flying overhead, the caption read: “Mom, I’ve been working outside the home for 20 years. Do I make enough money to buy a plane ticket home?”
The heat becomes so intense that Memphis Zoo releases statement Responding to what it called “misinformation” about pandas and saying Yaya suffered from a “chronic skin and fur disease” that “made her hair look thin and patchy,” Lele died of natural causes.
Even a visit to Memphis by an official Chinese scientific delegation and the announcement that Lele was not mistreated and died of a heart attack failed to quell the outrage. In April, after the loan agreement expired, Yaya returned to China as scheduled and was welcomed by celebrities at the Shanghai Airport.
The Chinese government donated the first pair of giant pandas, Xing Xing and Lingling, to the United States, and now leases the pandas, usually for 10 years, with renewable terms. The annual cost per pair ranges from $1 million to $2 million, plus the mandatory costs of building and maintaining an animal housing facility. Any cubs born to giant pandas belong to the Chinese government but can be rented out for an additional fee until they reach mating age.
The U.S. panda loan agreement is 50 years old, and the arrangement has encountered difficulties on several occasions. In 2010, Daniel Ashe, then the director of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, traveled to China to help resolve technocratic issues that threatened to renew the national zoo agreement. The issue was quickly resolved and the agreement extended.
“But things are completely different now,” said Ashe, now CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. “What we are seeing now is tensions at a higher level between our two governments that need to be addressed and resolved at that level.”
Observers were hopeful that such an 11th-hour, high-level intervention would come to fruition. Wild pointed to the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in November as a potential forum for President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping to make headlines by breaking the impasse. China’s ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, sounded semi-optimistic in his public statements.
“I’m going to do my best to make it happen, and there will be (pandas) here, in Aspen,” Xie said at the Aspen Safety Forum in Aspen, Colorado, in July.
But for now, panda enthusiasts of all ages are making the pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., hoping to catch one last glimpse of the bears. Last Friday at the zoo, amid the chirping of children, an adult couple carried their soon-to-be-born baby, each wearing matching panda-ear headbands. Colleen Blue and John Nungesser came from outside Philadelphia to see the pandas; this was Blue’s third time.
“I’ve been fascinated by them since I was a kid. I used to just bury people in facts about pandas,” she said.
Nungesser nodded and added: “On our first date, she couldn’t stop talking about pandas.”
Blue said she cried and “threw a tantrum” when she learned Washington’s pandas were leaving. The couple has already planned to take the baby to Atlanta to see pandas after the baby is born before leaving next summer.
Kelsey’s mother, Alison Lambert, said she remains optimistic that the two sides will reach an agreement because it would be beneficial to both parties. If they don’t, Kelsey is already working on a plan B.
“We can always fly to China,” she said. “That works too.”
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Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein and Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.
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