About six months after pandas left the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., two new pandas will be coming to the West Coast.
It will mark the return of “panda diplomacy” between the U.S. and China, Forbes reported.
Yun Chuan and Xin Bao have been chosen to be lent to the San Diego Zoo by China.
Yun Chuan is a five-year-old “mild-mannered male” whose mother was born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007.
His grandmother, whom Yun Chuan is partially named after, lived at the same zoo for 23 years, officials said.
Xin Bao is a 4-year-old “gentle and witty” female who is an “introvert with a sweet round face and big ears,” Forbes reported.
“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,” Megan Owen, vice president of conservation science at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, said in a news release.
The two pandas currently live at the Giant Panda Conservation and Research Center at Chengu and are expected to arrive later this year, but the zoo has some work to do before then.
It’s been five years since the San Diego Zoo hosted pandas, and they have to get the enclosures upgraded so that Yun Chuan and Xin Bao have a larger habitat.
San Diego isn’t the only zoo that is expecting new residents. The San Francisco Zoo is also slated to get a panda pair next year, KGO reported.
Panda diplomacy started in 1972 when President Richard Nixon worked with the Chinese government during the Cold War to bring the animals to the U.S. The U.S. sent two musk oxen to China in exchange. For decades, the pandas — and many more — lived in the U.S. on loan from China at the cost of up to $500,000 a year per panda, The Washington Post reported.
Last year, China wanted the ones that still lived in D.C., as well as the panda that lived in Memphis, Tennessee, returned.
The only zoo in the U.S. that still has pandas currently is Zoo Atlanta, and their loan agreement expires this year, Forbes reported.
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