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.
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Her name is Xin Xin, and she's one of only three pandas in the world not owned by China. But these may be the final day's of Mexico's half-century panda love affair. Mexico's last giant panda, Xin Xin, lounges in her habitat at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City.
As a gesture of goodwill following President Nixon's seminal state visit, Premier Enlai gifted two giant pandas to the American people. Nestled in the Nation's Capital and with free admission, the President and Mrs. Nixon selected the Smithsonian's National Zoo as the home for the giant panda bears.
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.
China technically owns every panda in the world. The pandas are rented to zoos throughout the world for sometimes as much as one million dollars per year.
That's because almost all pandas, even ones born abroad, are considered the property of China—as part of a loan program it has with selected zoos around the world.
A monthly celebration of the biodiversity of our planet's animals, plants and other organisms. Three US zoos currently host giant pandas: the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC has three, the Memphis Zoo in Tennessee has one and Zoo Atlanta in Georgia has four.
The animals are native to China. Xin Xin is a second-generation Mexican-born panda, with a lineage linked to Pe Pe and Ying Ying, who arrived at the zoo in 1975.
Beijing currently lends out 65 pandas to 19 countries through “cooperative research programs” with a stated mission to better protect the vulnerable species. The pandas return to China when they reach old age and any cubs born are sent to China around age 3 or 4.
Since 1998, because of a World Wildlife Fund lawsuit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allows a U.S. Zoo to import a panda only if the zoo can ensure that China will channel more than half of its loan fee into conservation efforts for wild pandas and their habitat.
The reason is because China leases the each panda to zoos for $2 million (in panda cost and research). And then there are the habitats the zoos must build, plus the expensive diets they have - oh, and if there's a baby, that's another $600,000 per year.
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.
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.
China is the only natural habitat of the giant pandas; and Beijing has used the animals since the 1950s as part of its panda diplomacy programme. China has gifted and loaned pandas to other countries, and also taken them back when relations soured! Beijing gifted its first panda, Ping Ping, to the USSR in 1957.