California’s state animal may be the grizzly bear, but today is a big moment for another bear to shine.
Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed August 8, 2024, as Panda Day in California, a nod to the public debut of two giant pandas, Yunchuan and Xinbao, at the San Diego Zoo on Thursday A fun (but also political) tribute.
The two giant pandas are the first to be sent to the United States in more than two decades, a gesture of goodwill from China.
“This conservation collaboration is part of a long history of California and China working together to achieve common goals,” said Newsom, who is expected to visit the zoo in the morning. “Building on the foundation of our strong partnership and deep cultural and economic ties, I visited China last year to promote priority issues such as climate action and economic development.
“We hope that the newly arrived giant panda ‘envoys of friendship’ will lead to further exchanges and cooperation between California and China,” he added when officially announcing California Giant Panda Day.
Yunchuan and Xinbao arrived in San Diego in June after a cooperative conservation agreement reignited “panda diplomacy” between China and the United States that seemed to have stalled for several years.
(Beginning in 1972, China has been loaning pandas to zoos across the United States as an “envoy of friendship” for more than 50 years, but after the San Diego Zoo returned the last batch of giant pandas to China in 2019, people were concerned about these pandas. Doubts have grown over the loaned futures. In recent years, the Memphis Zoo and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo have also sent back several pandas after multi-year agreements expired.
San Diego is a particularly meaningful place worthy of ushering in the next era of panda diplomacy. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance was the first organization in the United States to establish a collaborative giant panda conservation program, and researchers there have since made significant contributions to our scientific understanding of how to nurture this critical species.
In fact, one of the new pandas, Yunkuan, is the son of Zhenzhen, a female giant panda born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007.
Yunchuan is almost five years old, and his nose is long and pointed. He has an active personality, but is also known to be gentle and sensitive to others. According to his wildlife conservationist, he was serious about bamboo but always let other pandas go first.
Xin Bao, the smaller of the two pandas, has a large, round face and big furry ears, which sets her apart from the other pandas. She’s almost 4 years old and has a naturally playful nature – her keepers say she’s witty and curious, and she’s proven to be an excellent climber and even plays rough-and-tumble with other pandas.
Their new home is the San Diego Zoo’s newly expanded “Panda Ridge”, designed to reflect the rolling mountains, canyons and cliffs of China’s Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. The redesigned space, four times larger than the zoo’s previous panda habitat, also features climbable shade trees and rolling hillsides for Yunchuan and Xinbao to explore.
People wishing to see the new pandas can do so in a number of ways: get free timed tickets on the day of visit, wait in line in person, or book an exclusive 60-minute Early Morning Walking Tour with the Pandas. More information can be found on the zoo’s website.
