WaPo reports, in "The National Zoo’s giant pandas leave for China today."
Just bring back that Nixon magic.
November 8, 2023
"The National Zoo’s giant pandas will board a flight to China on Wednesday, ending an era that spanned half a century...."
"Soon, their compound at the zoo in Northwest Washington will be empty, and the joyous decades of pandamania will be over, at least for the time being.... China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos. The National Zoo’s current lease expires on Dec. 7.... The zoo’s giant panda story began in February 1972, when President Richard M. Nixon and first lady Pat Nixon made a historic Cold War visit to communist China.
At a banquet in Beijing, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai promised Mrs. Nixon that China would give some giant pandas to the United States as a friendly gesture.... It is not clear when, or if, the zoo will get giant pandas again...."
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48 comments:
How much did the Biden's get paid?
Just bring back that Nixon magic.
Hate to say it, but I'd vote for Nixon over either Trump or Biden. And I grew hating Richard Nixon.
What say we forget the Nixon angle and send a couple of grizzly bears over to China, postage paid?
Poor pandas... I mean, maybe they'll have better conditions in China, but I wouldn't put my money on it.
DC is a political showplace so it has a fantastic free zoo and several huge exhibition areas. Per DC politics, they specialize in larger endangered species (e.g, a massive Asian elephant valley; gorillas; orangutans; etc.)
The pandas are gone probably for good, as they are native only to China. I expect the zoo to fill their exhibit with something large, interesting, and endangered.
The San Diego zoo built their whole marketing campaign around the Giant Pandas and the offspring they produced. The beautiful bears are all gone now. The Panda village is a ghost town.
Maybe we can slip in some raccoons.
Next we'll ship out the Komodo Dragon
When my local zoo got a couple Pandas, they built an entire season's marketing campaign around it and charged a fortune to see them above and beyond the already high entrance fee. Most people who bought a ticket came away disappointed as it turns out most of the time Pandas don't do very much.
@tim maguire: "most of the time Pandas don't do very much"
The DC exhibit put in a couple sheltered "thrones" for the pandas to sit out there front and center. The pandas ignored them and went under natural trees and/or hid. One panda favored laying face down in the mud next to a walking path. All. the. time. I suppose panda-butt photos were the most common photos over the years.
Wife and I lived all our married lives (49 years!) in Washington suburbs and we’ve see the pandas numerous times as our kids were growing up. Meh. The animals were very reclusive and mostly kept to themselves in a corner of the exhibit. The departure of the pandas is the biggest news on the DC-based TV stations, in part because they weren’t supposed to leave for another month.
Maybe Xi plans to nuke DC between now and December 7th and didn’t want to hurt their pandas?
That's a huge enclosure now with no purpose. 4chan should start agitating for it to be turned into a homeless shelter. "Pull up the homeless cam; let's see what they're doing. The keeper is giving them their fentanyl! Oh, look, they're mating!"
There are still apparently 2 giant pandas in Atlanta, at Zoo Atlanta, but:
"The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation Giant Panda Conservation Center houses an adult male panda Yang Yang and an adult female panda Lun Lun, both born in 1997 in China.
They’ve sired a total of seven panda cubs who have all been returned to China...."
Although the article says these two were bought at auction and then donated to the city, there's no further information about the offspring, or why they have been sent to China.
PETA was not available for comment.
Isn't it odd though, all these glowing tributes to the advances in Panda studies, the forward march of discovery and understanding about Panda ecology, Panda behavior, Panda reproduction, Pandas rescued from the Brink!, Panda diplomacy, my what a successful program ! And yet not a single comment addressing why they're being sent back and the program terminated. Is there no hope for Panda Détente, no possibility of a Bamboo-shoot treaty?
China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos.
So, kinda like workers at Nike factories?
where to get panda fix
can we make trans=Panda using surrogate bears?
The Chinese are evacuating their Pandas, eh? Hmmm...
I see the army just expanded eligibility for those who can receive casualty affairs training. CAOs are the people who knock on your door to inform you if your loved one has died in combat.
“This will allow for a larger population of trained CNO's and CAO's in the event of a Large Scale Combat Operation or Mass Casualty event.”
Ruh Roh.
I hope they at least get an exit aisle.
I'm sure this is devestating news to someone who cares.
can Panda request asylee-refugee status >> may be a way to clog up process with red tape
They’ve sired a total of seven panda cubs who have all been returned to China...."
========
why not apply natural born citizen rule to progeny
how do you 'return' something that never came in the first place?
I’m afraid we’ve been bamboozled.
Why didn't we take the opportunity to clone than while they were here?
Democrats are Grizzley Bears. Vicious meat eaters who attack at the drop of a hat. Republicans are Giant Pandas. Docile bamboo eaters, low energy, and passive.
Its too bad they're leaving, I always wanted to see them when I visited DC, but never had the time.
Narayanan said...
“can we make trans-Panda using surrogate bears?“
I got some cans of black and white spray paint.
Does the Panda entourage going to China include Jack Black?
Exit the Pandaverse.
Will they eat and shoot before they leave?
First class? Coach?
I believe there will be giant pandas at the Atlanta Zoo for another year or two. Couldn't access the article, so I don't know if that was mentioned in the WaPo. Doesn't really matter. Nobody important lives around there anyway.
The pandas are boarding? Wow. I thought think they would be crated and loaded (in various meaning, because I’m sure they will want to be sedated as well).
Give me a couple of polar bears and some black hair dye, and I'll give you some downright edgy Punk Pandas, with f*ckin' attitude problems.
I think I was 8 when the pandas arrived. We went and stood in line to get in to see them. Sing-Sing and Ling-Ling, I believe their names were. They looked like large bathmats and were astoundingly sedentary.
Most overrated zoo animals ever. I've been back to the zoo many times and was never interested in stopping by the panda exhibit.
"There is an old Vulcan proverb: Only Nixon can go to China." - Spock in Star Trek 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_gwnFSFzv0
Oddly, we still have plenty of Red Pandas in US zoos.
I leave it to others to make a Winnie The Pooh (aka Xi) connection.
"I expect the zoo to fill their exhibit with something large, interesting, and endangered."
"Interesting"? Chris Christie dodged a bullet there.
Is it nonstop?
Can we call it The Panda Express?
I was in second grade when this happened, and I still remember it.
Didn't we send some Muskox over there in exchange?
Enigma:
I suppose panda-butt photos were the most common photos over the years.
I couldn't help it.
For those of you noting that pandas tend not to do anything, do keep in mind that this is a large animal which eats almost nothing but bamboo. Bamboo is a poor form of nutrition. Furthermore, the panda is a bear and has a carnivore digestive track, so it does a poor job of converting bamboo into energy and nutrition. The result is a very sluggish creature that has to ration its energy in order to stay alive. There's a reason why the panda has a small range. In that range, there is no predator capable of taking down an adult, and there is lots of bamboo available. If you eliminate either part, the panda is not going to last long.
This is also a problem with another cute animal: the koala. Food source provides very little nutrition, so it is very sluggish and is asleep most of the time. We tend to find sleepy animals to be cute, but sleepy animals tend to be, well, sleepy.
Pandas are niche. Very. If not for protections, they'd already be extinct. Even in the wild they're dumb
There's a lot of spin; "Panda Populations in the Wild Rebound". Yeah, up to 4/5ths of what they were in '97.
I believe the cubs sent back were to boost the wild population, with some success. They're numbers are up although <2K world wide, including captive animals. They also fell under the "on loan" situation.
Joe Bar:
Why didn't we take the opportunity to clone than while they were here?
Still can or will very shortly. All it takes is intact DNA; dandruff, follicle, snot.
Or yank the guy off before he goes. All you'll get is male clones but what the hell? They'll still be pandas.
For many years, I lived a few blocks south of the Atlanta Zoo -- ironically smack between the zoo and the federal prison that hosted the Marielitos Prison Riots. I owned a 1910 kit house that had also once been fenced in to contain German women and children in WWI, as theIr men were detained in the federal prison.
The only animals visible from outside the zoo were some rhinoceros and giraffes, but my Weimaraner was fascinated by the sounds and smells -- and the encyclopedically redolent dung-heap. He would circle the fence over and over. The only time he got loose, I headed to the zoo, fearing the worst, but not from languid pandas. A single block south of the zoo was crack city, where they fenced TVs and sold aging prostitutes.
Those zoo fences better served to keep the humans out. And a few blocks south of that, alarmingly lower fences kept the humans in.
Well, at least we bought our pandas. The local news stations would have creepy "breaking news" whenever the female one went into labor. TV trucks would line the street. What a grim job it must have been, waiting for a panda to give birth while trying to keep the crackheads from stealing your camera equipment.
Evolution. Anthropogenic climate change, perhaps catastrophic. Keep the pandas. Ban the oil, stop their transport.
Mister, we could use a man like Richard Nixon again.
Im going to start wearing my “Nixon Now” political button.
This is a thing. China will give you something, then when you have it and like it, they will F* you over and take it away from you. Did they need the Pandas to come home to take care of their parents? No, they needed them to go home to put a little nail in the hide of the United States of America.
China is Asshole.
@Josephbleau "China is Asshole."
Maybe. I can think of several reasons why this could end:
* It was a 50 year "loan" -- but thereby not a loan in reality. The current generation disagreed with Henry Kissinger's 1970s strategy.
* They wanted to breed the babies with the DNA of the wild population.
* They wanted to put the zoo pandas back in the wild in a new protected area.
* Panda marketing became old and stale and boring and cost more money than it brought i.
* They were retaliatory assholes because of anti-USA politics, tariffs and whatnot.
Some or all may be true.
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