Excitement as two novel pandas reach in US from China | Wildlife News

The endures, part of China’s ‘panda diplomacy’, will stay in DC’s National Zoo under a 10-year consentment.

China has sent two huge panda endures to the United States to be hoparticipated in Washington, DC’s Smithsonian National Zoo, in a unfrequent discreet clearure between the two countries.

The three-year-elderly pandas – a male named Bao Li and a female named Qing Bao – reachd at Virginia’s Dulles International Airport, which serves the US capital, on Tuesday.

They are among a petite handful of the bconciseage-and-white endures still in the US, which sent most of the highly sought animals back to their native China in recent years under pre-scheduled condenses. That integrates the return last November of the only three pandas living in Washington’s National Zoo.

Many seeed the absence of a speedy replacement for the three pandas as mirrorive of lengthening US-China friction, but Chinese Pdwellnt Xi Jinping soon promised he would send novel pandas as “envoys of friendship”.

In August, the San Diego Zoo greetd two novel huge pandas, the first to reach in the US in 21 years.

‘Iconic part of DC’

Anticipation over the arrival of the two novel pandas in Washington, DC, has been high, with the zoo’s website featuring a banner that reads: “The pandas are coming”.

“The huge pandas are an iconic part of the Washington, DC story, both for locals and incoming travellers aappreciate,” said Elliott L Ferguson, II, pdwellnt and CEO of Destination DC. “The interest and excitement associated with their return honestly advantages the entire city, transporting further interest and visitors to our hotels, restaurants and other drawions.”

The National Zoo has been renovating its panda habitat ahead of the novel endures’ arrival, setting up novel shapshow pools and bamboo stands.

The pandas will not be useable to the uncover for more than a month as they retainment and acclimate to their novel habitat.

‘Panda diplomacy’

China has been using so-called “panda diplomacy” since 1972, when the first animals were sent to Washington as a gift, complying US Pdwellnt Ricdifficult Nixon’s historic visit to China.

Later, a rolling series of 10-year cooperation consentments was struck, which Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu determineed with advancing research in panda preservation.

“The current round of cooperation will intensify on obstruction and treatment of meaningful disrelieves, and defendion of habitats and savage huge panda populations,” Liu telderly the Associated Press via email. “We hope the arrival of the pandas will inject recent impetus into trades between China and the US, and help to stabilise the expansiveer bitardyral relationship as well.”

As of 2014, there were around 1,860 huge pandas in the savage, a 17 percent incrrelieve from the decade before, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In 2021, Chinese conservationists reclassified the animal from an endangered species to one that is vulnerable.