Giant pandas get police escort and heat welcome from followers as they return to DC zoo | EUROtoday

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A brand new set of big pandas have arrived in Washington DC, marking the newest step in panda diplomacy.

Bao Li and Qing Bao touched down at Dulles International Airport Tuesday morning on a Fedex Boeing 777 cargo jet dubbed the “Panda Express.” TV footage confirmed the bears being transferred in crates from the airplane onto Fedex vans emblazoned with a photograph of a panda consuming bamboo.

A gaggle of airport handlers sporting neon vests that learn “Fedex Panda Team” helped transfer the massive bears.

Police escorted the pandas to the Smithsonian National Zoo, the place they’ll spend the subsequent 10 years of their lives being adored by tens of millions of followers, lots of whom have been exterior the zoo to greet them as they arrived simply earlier than midday. The zoo closed to the general public on Tuesday.

Their public debut is scheduled for January 24, 2025.

The duo departed the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda on Monday night native time in Dujiangyan.

To put together the pandas for his or her 19-hour and roughly 8,000-mile journey, caretakers packed water, medicines and snacks like steamed corn bread, bamboo shoots and carrots.

The bears wanted to endure bodily examinations and quarantines forward of their departures from China.

The US despatched three skilled keepers and veterinary consultants to China to assist escort the pandas to DC.

The bears will now be quarantined for no less than 30 days to acclimatize to their new atmosphere and forestall the unfold of any illnesses.

Their new house is a sprawling habitat full with a hammock, murals, climbing constructions and a steady supply of bamboo. Zoo officers launched a multi-million greenback renovation challenge of the enclosure in November 2023, when the ability stated goodbye to its longtime panda residents Mei Xiang, 26 Tian Tian, 27, and their cub Xiao Qi Ji, 4.

It had been the primary time in additional than 20 years that the panda enclosure on the zoo had gone with out its favourite black and white animals. China first started loaning pandas to the US in 1972.

As pandas started leaving zoos throughout the nation, together with in San Diego and Memphis, it grew to become unclear if China would ship one other pair of the beloved mammals.

But final November whereas assembly with leaders on the APEC in San Francisco, Chinese President Xi Jinping hinted {that a} new pair of pandas can be heading to the National Zoo.

First Lady Jill Biden made the introduced the information in a video message alongside the zoo’s administrators in May.

“It’s official! The pandas are coming back to DC!” she stated.

The intention of the zoo’s panda program is to breed the 2 bears. Any cubs they produce will return to China by the age of 4.

The zoo has agreed to pay a $1m annual price to the China Wildlife Conservation Association in change for housing the bears. The pandas don’t belong to the zoo and will likely be on a 10-year mortgage. It prices the zoo a complete of $2.8m yearly to deal with the animals.

One of the bears is expounded to former residents of the zoo. Bao Li is the son of Bao Bao, a feminine big panda who was born on the zoo in 2013. He’s additionally the grandson of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, the zoo’s most up-to-date bears.

About two million individuals go to the zoo yearly with the hope of catching a glimpse on the animals.

There are about 1,864 pandas within the wild. They stopped being thought of an endangered species in 2016 and are actually categorised as weak.