Giant Pandas to Return to the San Francisco Zoo After 40-Year Absence

A panda at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
In what appears to be the latest chapter in the decades-old practice of so-called “panda diplomacy,” the San Francisco Zoo will soon receive a pair of giant pandas from the People’s Republic of China, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced on Thursday.
The news comes on the heels of an announcement in February that the San Diego Zoo would be receiving a pair of pandas.
Panda diplomacy is the practice of sending giant pandas from China to other countries as a tool of diplomacy and wildlife conservation.  It has its roots in centuries-old tradition. From 1941 through 1984, the Chinese government sent the pandas, which usually travel in pairs, as gifts; however, since that time, they typically are on loan.
“San Francisco is absolutely thrilled that we will be welcoming giant pandas to our San Francisco Zoo,” Breed said in a statement from Beijing, where she signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese wildlife officials regarding the panda loan.
The timing of the pandas’ arrival is contingent upon the completion of an enclosure for the pandas at the zoo.
The last time San Francisco hosted giant pandas was in the two-year period 1984 to 1985, when two of the animals, Yun-Yun and Ying-Xin, were loaned to the zoo for almost three months. The pair attracted four times the average attendance of visitors to the zoo, the mayor’s office said Thursday in a statement.
The giant panda, also known as simply the panda, is a bear species endemic to China that is characterized by its bold black-and-white coat and rotund body. It is also a fairly solitary animal except for during mating season.
The panda’s diet is made up almost entirely of bamboo, which led to a story that turns on the ambiguity of an errant comma in its final sentence fragment that concerns a panda that eats a sandwich in a café, draws a gun, and fires two shots into the air. This further led to a book on the topic of punctuation called “Eats, Shoots & Leaves.”
(Photo: Accura Media Group)