Atlanta: Two giant pandas from China arrived at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport on September 27 in a specially arranged jumbo jet, the ‘FedEx Panda Express’, instantly making them Atlanta’s newest celebrities. They landed as part of the agreement between the Chinese and American governments.
The transfer happened as part of the ‘panda diplomacy’ practised by the Chinese government since the 1900s. China claims ownership of all the world's pandas and leases them to foreign zoos as part of this practice. They sent pandas to other countries as part of political benevolence, soft power and international partnership.
It's after two years of the city sending its last bears home to China that the giant pandas landed to take up residence at Zoo Atlanta, one of three US zoos to house the bears.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said during a state visit on Thursday (September 24) that the pandas would soon be on their way. Xi described them as ‘an envoy of friendship' between China and the US.
The pandas will be quarantined for a month in a secure area of the biopark. Both pandas are on loan for 10 years, as per reports from PBS News. Both pandas were born in 2020 and were residing at the Chengdu Research Base of giant panda breeding. A farewell to the pandas was held on Saturday at the Chengdu Research Base itself, where many showed up with farewell posters.
Any cubs born abroad remain the property of the Chinese government. The pair travelled to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport aboard a dedicated Boeing 777 emblazoned with a panda logo, with FedEx donating the transport costs, Zoo Atlanta said. In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature reclassified giant pandas from endangered to vulnerable. The organisation estimates that nearly 1,900 remain in the wild, most of them protected in nature reserves in China.
(With agency inputs from Reuters)