China will send giant pandas to live at San Francisco’s zoo for the first time, Mayor London Breed has announced.
“The memorandum of understanding signed by Mayor Breed and the (China Wildlife Conservation Association) this morning is the first official leased agreement for Giant Pandas to have residency at the San Francisco Zoo,” a media release from the city on Friday reads. “In 1984 and again in 1985, the San Francisco Zoo temporarily hosted Giant Pandas from China as part of a global tour.”
In February, it was announced that China would be sending two giant pandas to the San Diego Zoo – marking the first time it has granted new panda loans in the US in two decades, CNN previously reported.
“San Francisco is absolutely thrilled that we will be welcoming Giant Pandas to our San Francisco Zoo,” Breed said in a statement, adding, “it’s an honor that our City has been chosen for the first time to be a long-term home for Giant Pandas.”
The news comes just months after Chinese leader Xi Jinping suggested China could send new pandas to the US, specifically to the San Diego Zoo, as “envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.”
His comments came last year, shortly after the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D,C sent its three pandas back to China – marking the end of more than 50 years of Chinese pandas being housed at the zoo. The National Zoo was the first US zoo to showcase pandas, and the end of its program had left Zoo Atlanta as the only other US zoo to feature pandas.
Pandas have served as something of an unofficial barometer of China-US relations since 1972, when Beijing gifted a pair of the bears to the Smithsonian National Zoo. following US President Richard Nixon’s historic ice-breaking trip to China.
Fewer than 2,000 giant pandas remain in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund, which lists the species as vulnerable.
CNN’s Taylor Romine, Jessie Yeung, Yong Xiong and Nectar Gan contributed to this report.
