Unbearable: US to say goodbye to its last remaining Chinese pandas — for now
America’s panda-monium is coming to an end.
The last giant pandas in the US will head back to China later this year, more than two decades after capturing hearts in Atlanta and beyond.
Zoo Atlanta is preparing to return beloved pandas Lun Lun and Yang Yang and their twin offspring, Ya Lun and Xi Lun, to China before the end of the year.
The four black and white bears have been the only pandas in the US since three from the National Zoo in Washington, DC, were sent back to their homeland in November after residing there for 10 years.
Lun Lun and Yang Yang arrived in Atlanta in 1999 via a 25-year contract that expires late this year. Ya Lun and Xi Lun were born at the zoo in 2016.
“The terms of Zoo Atlanta’s giant panda loan with China have always included the stipulation that per the terms of the loan agreement, all offspring of Lun Lun and Yang Yang travel to China when they are of age,” the zoo said in a statement in November.
“All five of Ya Lun’s and Xi Lun’s older siblings have done so and now live in China.”
China loans pandas abroad as a gesture of goodwill but retains ownership of them and their cubs.
As tensions have mounted between the two nations, US zoos have sent their pandas back to China as loan agreements have lapsed.
Memphis Zoo returned its last surviving panda in April 2023, while San Diego Zoo returned its bears in 2019.
Fingers crossed it won’t be too long until the US welcomes new pandas. San Diego Zoo said last month it would bring a pair of pandas — Yun Chuan and Xin Bao — over this year, hopefully over summer, the first to arrive in the country in decades.
San Francisco Zoo is planning to bring some over, too, after Mayor London Breed traveled to China last month in what California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones derided as a “pursuit of pandas” while the city “grapples with escalating crime and homelessness.”
Billionaire New York City supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis said last year he’s working to convince China to loan some pandas to the Central Park Zoo.
In the meantime, for those who can’t see the pandas before they depart Atlanta Zoo, they can be seen frolicking on the parks live on Panda Cam.