How many pandas are in zoos?

To protect the wild population, China established 67 natural reserves for giant pandas, covering 53.8% of their habitat and 66.8% of the wild population. As of the end of 2020, there were 633 captive giant pandas, and 11 of them have been successfully reintroduced into the wild, with 9 surviving.



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Native to central China, giant pandas have come to symbolize vulnerable species. As few as 1,864 giant pandas live in their native habitat, while another 600 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers around the world.

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The zoo claims that this is because of a three-year contract it has with the China Wildlife Conservation Association.

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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.

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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.

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Panda diplomacy is the practice of sending giant pandas from China to other countries as a tool of diplomacy. From 1941 to 1984, China gave a gift of pandas to other countries. After a change in policy in 1984, pandas were leased instead of given as a gift.

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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.

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While giant pandas are no longer endangered, they are considered a vulnerable species. In return for keeping the pandas for a few years, foreign zoos have to pay around $500,000 to $1 million each annually to China.

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We have read the enlightening NY Times article about how pandas in U.S. zoos are like money pits, though adorable ones. The reason is because China leases the each panda to zoos for $2 million (in panda cost and research).

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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?

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Where Else Can You See Pandas? Outside of China, there are currently 27 zoos located in 21 countries that have giant pandas. The countries that have pandas are: Australia (Adelaide Zoo)

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We have read the enlightening NY Times article about how pandas in U.S. zoos are like money pits, though adorable ones. The reason is because China leases the each panda to zoos for $2 million (in panda cost and research).

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Xiao Qi Ji and his parents—Mei Xiang and Tian Tian—will all be sent to China in early December, when the Smithsonian's current agreement with the Chinese government to house pandas at the zoo expires. China has long leveraged its monopoly on the world's panda population as an instrument of its foreign policy.

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At dinner in Beijing, China, in February 1972, First Lady Patricia Nixon mentioned her fondness for giant pandas to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. As a gesture of goodwill following President Nixon's seminal state visit, Premier Enlai gifted two giant pandas to the American people.

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With diplomatic tensions running high between Beijing and a number of Western governments, China appears to be gradually pulling back its pandas from multiple Western zoos as their agreements expire.

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On Aug. 21, 2020, the pair gave birth to a male cub named Xiao Qi Ji and that same year the zoo announced it signed another three-year extension to keep all three pandas until the end of 2023.

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