The pandas are treated as much like wild animals as possible. This is foremost a research unit, the workplace for resident Chinese and international scientists, and you can watch a documentary about their breeding projects.
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Pandas bring enormous economic benefits to these local communities through ecotourism and other complementary, nature-related activities due to the increase in globalization. The mountains of the wild pandas also form the watershed for the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, which are the economic arteries of China.
The pandas return to China when they reach old age and any cubs born are sent to China around age 3 or 4. The San Diego zoo returned its pandas in 2019, and the last bear at the Memphis, Tennessee, zoo went home earlier this year.
American zoos do not actually own the pandas that we enjoy going to visit. China rents pandas out to the tune of $1 million a year. Zoos typically sign a 10-year contract, which means that at the end of that contract, a zoo will have spent $10 million renting one panda. And any cubs that are born while at the zoo?
Before the 1980s China gifted pandas, but today they are offered strictly on a loan basis. They are usually leased to the host country for roughly $1 million a year, plus the cost of building a panda facility. The leasing fees are said to cover the costs of giant panda “conservation” efforts in China.
In 1984, China ended panda gifts, switching to a policy of high-priced loans. This history has made Mexico one of a few countries able to keep locally born panda cubs. Since 1985, the loan program has required that zoos return any cubs to China.
A five-year-old giant panda raised at Shanghai Wild Animal Park has undergone surgery and is currently in treatment after being diagnosed with an intestinal obstruction, according to the park and the hospital facilitating the surgery.