National Zoo Saying Goodbye to Giant Pandas

WASHINGTON — It is the end of an era at the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.

By Dec. 7, Tian Tian and Mei Xiang, the giant pandas who have lived at the conservation park since 2000, and their 3-year-old cub Xiao Qi Ji, will be returning to China.

While the parting is bittersweet — it’s been 50 years since D.C. residents didn’t have a panda as a neighbor — zoo officials said their ultimate destination, a facility operated by the China Wildlife Conservation Association, will be welcoming.

Bryan Amaral, senior curator at the National Zoo, has called it something of a “panda base.”

“It’s a place where they have lots and lots of giant pandas, very similar to what you would see … how our giant pandas live here, very similar to that,” Amaral told reporters recently. 

“They just have a lot more giant pandas than we have. Where we have elephants and, you know, all kinds of other things, they have just pandas,” Amaral said.

This past week the zoo hosted Panda Palooza: A Giant Farewell, a series of free events that honored and celebrated the park’s signature attractions.

On a recent Thursday morning, adults and children alike “oo’d” and “ah’d” as they spotted the 26-year-old Tian Tian and 25-year-old Mei Xiang in separate but attached enclosures.

For Tian Tian, the morning meant sleeping near a back wall, before venturing forth in search of one of the pumpkins left for the pandas to nibble on.

Mei Xiang, meanwhile, was up a tree, literally, sitting on a sturdy branch while letting her feet dangle from the evergreen.

For a time, Xiao Qi Ji was missing in action, but the robust cub soon made an appearance inside the Panda House, roaming from one bamboo strewn enclosure to the next, as a school group about two dozen strong tried to keep up along the adjacent hallway.

Watching them, one was instantly struck by the fact two generations of Washingtonians have been following every aspect of the pandas’ lives at the zoo, from birthdays to arrival of new cubs, and that the generation visiting this week will be the last, for a while at least.

A volunteer at the zoo told a visiting group on Thursday that there are currently no plans for more pandas to come to the zoo, but that things could change.

Last month in a written statement, zoo spokesperson Annalisa Meyer said, “We’re  working with our Chinese partners to develop a new giant panda program.

“After 51 years of success, we remain committed to the conservation of this species, which includes gaining a better understanding of the giant panda habitat. We’ve accomplished a lot. Now it is a question of what the science and conservation needs are for the future and how do we best pool our expertise and resources to attain new conservation goals,” she said.

Pandas first arrived at the National Zoo in April 1972, a byproduct of President Richard Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon’s historic visit to China two months earlier.

Seated next to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during one of the many galas thrown during the state visit, the first lady spoke enthusiastically about the tours she’d taken since arriving in China, and particularly of her visit to the Peking Zoo to see the pandas.

As she spoke, according to an account on the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum website, Pat Nixon noticed an ornately wrapped box of cigarettes on the table in front of her.

The box was wrapped in pink tissue and decorated with Chinese pandas.

Lifting it, she remarked how enamored she was with them.

“Aren’t they cute? I love them,” the first lady said.

“I’ll give you some,” Zhou smiled, and soon arrangements were being made to ship two pandas — a female named Ling-Ling and a male named Hsing-Hsing — to the National Zoo in Washington.

In exchange, the White House sent China two Arctic musk oxen named Milton and Matilda.

Pat Nixon attended the ceremony on April 20, 1972, to dedicate the new Panda House, appearing alongside the director of the Smithsonian Institution and a Chinese government representative.

Though smitten with the new arrivals herself, what really got Nixon’s attention was the crush of the crowd.

“Panda-monium” had broken out in the capital, the ordinarily reserved first lady said.

Both pandas lived into the 1990s and had five cubs together, though none lived past a few days. 

About a year after Hsing-Hsing’s death in 1999, the zoo and the Chinese government came to another agreement for more pandas to come to Washington. That’s when Mei Xiang and Tian Tian arrived — ensuring that pandas would have an unbroken streak as top attractions at the zoo.

There was, however, a slight difference surrounding the arrival of the new pandas.

In 1972, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing had been bestowed as a gift from China in perpetuity. In 1984, China updated its panda protocols to stipulate that henceforth pandas would be offered on 10-year loans.

The 2000 agreement that brought Tian Tian and Mei Xiang to live at the zoo stipulated they would remain in the U.S. for 10 years in exchange for $10 million, according to the zoo’s website.

A decade later, the Smithsonian and the China Wildlife Conservation Association signed a new Giant Panda Cooperative Research and Breeding Agreement that extended the pandas’ stay through December 2015.

The contract was later extended to 2020, and then again to 2023, shortly before each previous contract expired.

Though the gifting of the original pandas and the ongoing loan of the second pair has served as a gesture of goodwill and a kind of soft diplomacy between China and the U.S., the practice has come under greater scrutiny in recent years with some accusing the Chinese of using the popular creature as a way to soften the country’s authoritarian image.

In the last Congress a bill was even introduced challenging a stipulation in the long-standing agreement that panda cubs born abroad must be shipped to China within a few years.

“We do need to think outside of the box in terms of dealing with their aggression,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., at the time.

Though the bill made no traction in the Democratically controlled House, Mace, a sponsor of the measure, said she hoped it would send a message to China, which was then hosting the Winter Games in Beijing, about its human rights record.

Whatever the role the arrangement has played in geopolitics, it is undeniable that pandas, as a species, have benefited greatly from the research, breeding efforts and medical care they’ve received at the National Zoo and other facilities around the world.

In 2016, the giant panda was removed from the endangered species list and upgraded to “vulnerable” status by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Still, only about 1,800 pandas remain in the wild.

And conservationists say the main cause is that the forests they call home have routinely been cleared for farming, timber and other human activities.

Once their departure date arrives, Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and Xiao Qi Ji will fly home to China accompanied by some of the zoo staff who have cared for them for all these years.

After they’re gone, the plan is to improve the panda habitat, adding things like extra climbing structures and better air conditioning and smoke detection systems with fingers crossed that the enclosures won’t be empty for long.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue