Zoo Atlanta’s giant pandas will be sent to China later this year

Atlanta panda fans, prepare to say goodbye to the city’s four iconic black and white bears.

The four giant pandas housed at Zoo Atlanta, Lun Lun, Yang Yang, Ya Lun and Xi Lun, will be sent to China later this year, with the zoo’s agreement with China set to expire at the end of 2024, the zoo announced in A press release. Friday.

“Zoo Atlanta has applied for an international travel permit for the pandas, and the bears are expected to travel to China in the fourth quarter of 2024,” the zoo said, noting that the exact timing of their return has not been determined. yet been determined and “will be identified in collaboration with official partners in China.

“While Zoo Atlanta remains committed to the long-term stewardship and conservation of the species, no discussions have yet taken place with partners in China regarding the future of the zoo’s giant panda program after the current Zoo Atlanta agreement expires,” the release said. added.

Zoo Atlanta noted that its panda program has been “particularly successful in terms of future contributions to the species’ population,” with seven giant pandas born at the zoo since 2006, including two sets of twins. Lun Lun and Yang Yang are the parents of Ya Lun and Xi Lun. The couple’s other cubs have already been returned to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Center in Chengdu, China.

In recent years, pandas from the San Diego Zoo, the Memphis Zoo and the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C., have also been returned to China.

But more pandas are expected to arrive in different parts of the United States. In April, it was announced that China would send giant pandas to live at the San Francisco Zoo for the first time. And the San Diego Zoo announced in February that it would receive two giant pandas from China, marking the first time the country has provided new panda loans to the United States in two decades.

Pandas have served as something of an unofficial barometer of Sino-US relations since 1972, when Beijing gifted two bears to the Smithsonian National Zoo, following US President Richard Nixon’s historic ice-breaking trip to China. Chinese leader Xi Jinping said in 2023 that bamboo-eating bears serve as “envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American people.”

There are just over 1,800 giant pandas left in the wild, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, which classifies the species as vulnerable and describes it as the rarest bear in the world. Habitat destruction and fragmentation have contributed to the decline of the species.

CNN’s Zoe Sottile contributed to this report.

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