Zoo Atlanta will bring its pandas back to China this year

Zoo Atlanta will return its four pandas to China at the end of this year, the facility announced Friday, in the latest chapter of a program often referred to as “panda diplomacy.”

The parents and their twins have been the only giant pandas in the United States since November, when the National Zoo in Washington returned three bears to China, a move that some saw as a worrying sign of deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Chinese. . China owns and leases all the giant pandas in American zoos.