Team Blitz India
WASHINGTON: After a long flight, Bao Li and Qing Bao arrived at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. The pair of giant pandas from China will now begin a 10-year residence in the nation’s capital, weeks before the presidential election.
Bao Li, a 3-year-old male, and Qing Bao, a 3-year-old female, are the latest of their species to be sent to the U.S. after a series of repatriations from American zoos raised concerns that geopolitical tensions could be hurting “panda diplomacy,” a longtime symbol of friendship between the world’s two largest economies.
The pandas landed at Dulles International Airport in the morning and journeyed to their new home in special FedEx trucks accompanied by a motorcade that included police on motorcycles, NBC Washington reported. On October 14, the pair left their home in the Conservation and Research Center’s Dujiangyan Panda Base in China’s southwest Sichuan province, the China Wildlife Conservation Association said in a statement.
The pandas’ flight was supplied with essentials like steamed corn buns, bamboo shoots, carrots, water, and medicine to meet their needs,” the statement said.
“The US side dispatched three experienced keepers and veterinarians to Sichuan in advance to assist in the care of the pandas and familiarise themselves with their situation, and they will accompany the pandas on the journey,” it said.
“We believe that this new phase of US-China cooperation on giant panda conservation will build upon the existing strong partnership, achieving even greater success in areas such as the prevention and treatment of major panda diseases, epidemic prevention, scientific exchanges, and contributing to panda conservation in the wild and the construction of the Giant Panda National Park,” it added.
The National Zoo has been without any pandas since last November, when adult pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian and their 3-year-old male cub, Xiao Qi Ji, returned to China after efforts to renew their loan agreement failed. The bears had long been one of the zoo’s main attractions, with the adult pandas having been there since 2000.
