WASHINGTON — It's the end of an era at the Smithsonian National Zoo in D.C. The zoo's giant pandas left the District Wednesday afternoon.
Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and Xiao Qi Ji departed D.C. aboard the FedEx Panda Express, a custom-decaled Boeing 777F aircraft, from Dulles International Airport right around 1p.m. The bears will make a 19-hour trans-Pacific flight from D.C. to Chengdu, China, with a brief stop in Alaska to refuel. Animal care experts will accompany the pandas for safety.
D.C.'s giant pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian first arrived from China in 2000. They have four surviving cubs.
“Millions have connected with and grown up loving Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cubs by visiting us in Washington, D.C., and watching our Giant Panda Cam,” said Brandie Smith, the John and Adrienne Mars Director of NZCBI. “Caring for one animal and its future is the beginning of caring more deeply for the natural world and our place in it. Although this farewell is bittersweet, we must celebrate these bears and their impact on fans and on our understanding, care and conservation of their species."
The pandas' trip home comes amid what veteran China-watchers say is a larger trend. With diplomatic tensions running high between Beijing and a number of Western governments, China appears to be gradually pulling back its pandas from multiple Western zoos as their agreements expire.
Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, called the trend “punitive panda diplomacy,” noting that two other American zoos have lost their pandas in recent years, while zoos in Scotland and Australia are facing similar departures with no signs of their loan agreements being renewed.
Beijing currently lends out 65 pandas to 19 countries through “cooperative research programs” with a stated mission to better protect the vulnerable species. The pandas return to China when they reach old age and any cubs born are sent to China around age 3 or 4.
The San Diego zoo returned its pandas in 2019, and the last bear at the Memphis, Tennessee, zoo went home earlier this year. The departure of the National Zoo’s bears means that the only giant pandas left in America are at the Atlanta Zoo — and that loan agreement expires late next year.