Guests to the Edinburgh Zoo had their ultimate likelihood to see and bid farewell Thursday to a pair of widespread big pandas who’re returning house to China after greater than a decade in Scotland.
Yang Guang and Tian Tian are leaving in early December after a 12-year keep. They’ve been a preferred attraction since folks lined the highway exterior the zoo to greet them after they arrived in 2011.
They’re the newest pandas to depart the West after change agreements have expired and never been renewed by China.
3 GIANT PANDAS LEAVE DC’S SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL ZOO FOR CHINA, ENDING 50-YEAR RUN
The one U.S. zoo with pandas is in Atlanta and its settlement expires subsequent yr. Washington’s Nationwide Zoo despatched its three pandas — Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub, Xiao Qi Ji — to China earlier in November. The black and white bears on the San Diego Zoo had been despatched house in 2019 and the remaining panda on the Memphis, Tennessee, zoo returned earlier this yr.
Large panda Yang Guang sits on the Edinburgh Zoo in Edinburgh, Scotland, U.Ok., Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023. (Jane Barlow/PA through AP)
Veteran China-watchers have speculated that the Folks’s Republic is regularly pulling its bears from American and European zoos attributable to tensions with Western governments over a number of points.
Nonetheless, Chinese language President Xi Jinping stated throughout his latest journey to the U.S. that his authorities was ”able to proceed” lending bears to American zoos, giving hope to U.S. panda followers that they have not seen the final of them.
GIANT PANDAS TO LEAVE THE NATIONAL ZOO IN D.C. FOR CHINA EARLIER THAN EXPECTED
The pair in Scotland are the one pandas within the U.Ok. After unsuccessful breeding makes an attempt — pure and synthetic — the zoo stated it has no plans to usher in others as a result of a worldwide biodiversity disaster requires it to work on defending extra endangered animals.
”With greater than 1,000,000 species susceptible to extinction and our pure world in disaster, Yang Guang and Tian Tian have had an unimaginable impression by inspiring thousands and thousands of individuals to care about nature,” stated David Area, chief govt of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. ”That added curiosity within the pandas’ departure this yr has allowed us to attach many extra folks with the conservation causes (we’re) actively concerned with, and with nature extra typically.”
The pandas had been loaned to the zoo in 2011 underneath a 10-year settlement that the China Wildlife Conservation Affiliation prolonged for 2 extra years.
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The panda exhibit was being closed to the general public Thursday afternoon to permit workers to start getting ready the bears for his or her return.