Pair of giant pandas from China set to shack up at Atlanta zoo - BERITAJA

A brace of giant pandas who person ne'er met are about to go roommates arsenic portion of a decade-long conservation business betwixt U.S. and Chinese zoos, announced up of President Donald Trump’s recent sojourn to China.

Male panda Ping Ping and female panda Fu Shuang will alert from their existent location successful Chengdu, China, to different panda sanctuary earlier completing an 8,000-mile travel to the U.S., wherever they will shack up astatine Zoo Atlanta.

The pandas’ recreation day has not been announced, but the business betwixt Zoo Atlanta and the China Wildlife Conservation Association follows a successful 25-year conservation statement that ended successful 2024.

The first announcement came weeks up of Trump’s scheduled sojourn to China this month.

“Zoo Atlanta is delighted and honored to yet again beryllium trusted arsenic stewards of this treasured type and to partner pinch the China Wildlife Conservation Association connected the continued conservation and investigation efforts that are the about important outcomes of this cooperation,” Raymond B. King, president and CEO, said successful a statement past month.

“We can’t hold to meet Ping Ping and Fu Shuang and to invited our members, guests, city, and organization backmost to the wonderment and joyousness of elephantine pandas,” King continued.

The Georgia-based Zoo has a beardown way grounds successful panda conservation, pinch 7 offspring calved to different brace of Chinese pandas, Lun Lun and nan Yang, betwixt 2006 and 2016.

Their 2 youngest cubs, Ya Lun and Xi Lun, near Atlanta for the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding successful October 2024; the pair’s first 5 offspring besides unrecorded there.

Giant pandas are recovered only successful the chaotic successful China, according to the WWF, and the state cautiously controls wherever it distributes the species, often lending pandas to different nations while retaining ownership, moreover of those calved internationally.

In 2024, it sent 2 elephantine pandas to San Diego and 2 others to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo successful Washington, D.C., Beritaja reported.

The type faces galore threats to its survival, namely residence loss. Establishing caller reserves is integral to its longevity, according to the WWF and Zoo Atlanta.

The Chinese authorities has invested “significant resources” successful panda protection and established 67 elephantine panda reserves, the Atlanta Zoo says, adding that 72 per cent of chaotic elephantine pandas — a type classified arsenic susceptible by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — are “strictly protected.”

Giant pandas person been a awesome of the U.S.-China relationship ever since Beijing talented a brace of pandas to the National Zoo successful Washington successful 1972, and China has agelong utilized its elephantine panda indebtedness programme arsenic a instrumentality of Beijing’s soft powerfulness diplomacy worldwide.

The relation antecedently stated that the caller information of practice will thief China and the U.S. to beforehand successful areas ranging from illness prevention and curen to technological exchanges.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a starring international organization, removed pandas from its endangered type list in 2016 and classified them arsenic “vulnerable” instead.

— pinch files from The Associated Press.