Both parents and any offspring remained under the ownership of China. In December 2020, the Zoo announced that giant pandas would continue to live at the Smithsonian's National Zoo through the end of 2023.
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The San Diego Zoo returned its pandas in 2019, and the last bear at the Memphis, Tennessee, zoo went home earlier this year. The departure of the National Zoo's bears would mean that the only giant pandas left in America are at the Atlanta Zoo — and that loan agreement expires late next year.
Giant panda Xiao Qi Ji roams in his enclosure at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, Sept. 28, 2023. The San Diego Zoo returned its pandas in 2019, and the last bear at the Memphis, Tennessee, zoo went home earlier this year.
So we had to do it now that they're going away.” The National Zoo's three giant pandas — Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji — are set to return to China in early December with no public signs that the 50-year-old exchange agreement struck by President Richard Nixon will continue.
The giant pandas left the San Diego Zoo a few weeks ago after the zoo's successful giant panda conservation program with China came to an end. That end meant Bai Yun and Xiao Liwu, the final two Giant Pandas left at the San Diego Zoo, would have to be repatriated to China.
It's the end of an era at the San Diego Zoo as the last two giant pandas will soon leave for China. In an announcement Monday, zoo officials said the pandas, Bai Yun, 27 — a fixture at the zoo for 23 years — and her son, Xiao Liwu, 6, would leave San Diego because a multiyear agreement with the Chinese had ended.
There used to be more pandas at zoos around the world, including St. Louis, but China's population boom and several famines after World War II that led to hunting them for food led to far lower numbers. In the early 1960's China set up a nature reserve to protect the Giant Panda.
Every giant panda in the US is on loan from the Chinese government. At every zoo in the country - except Atlanta's - that loan will expire in December. The two babies, Ya Lun and Xi Lun, and the two adults, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, at Zoo Atlanta are expected to remain but head back sometime in 2024.
The Chinese government, which gifted the first pair of pandas - Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling - to the U.S., now leases the pandas out for a typical 10-year renewable term. The annual fee ranges from $1 million to $2 million per pair, plus mandatory costs to build and maintain facilities to house the animals.
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?
Don't expect new pandas to come to the San Diego Zoo anytime soon. The attraction will continue to highlight the status of this threatened species, thereby continuing its legacy even if pandas cubs are no longer in residence there.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world joined us and Panda Voices in calling on the Memphis Zoo to send its neglected giant pandas Yaya and LeLe back to China, and while LeLe tragically passed away before getting the chance, we're thrilled to report that YaYa is now thriving in her homeland.