China has agreed to loan a pair of prized pandas to the San Francisco Zoo, capping a yearlong lobbying effort from embattled Mayor London Breed.
Breed, who made her pitch directly to Chinese President Xi Jinping as he was leaving the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation last year, followed up the request with two letters to the Chinese Communist Party leader and a weeklong visit to China.
“San Francisco is absolutely thrilled that we will be welcoming Giant Pandas to our San Francisco Zoo,” she said in a statement. “It’s an honor that our city has been chosen for the first time to be a long-term home for Giant Pandas.”
The rare pandas are expected to boost tourism to the city and the zoo.
China’s “panda diplomacy” is a practice that began in 1941 with the gifting of gigantic panda bears to other countries. However, a 1984 policy change led to the animals being leased rather than being gifted outright.
Breed and the China Wildlife Conservation Association signed a memorandum of understanding, officials confirmed late Thursday.
While the pandas are a win for Breed and the city, caring for them will be costly.
San Francisco Zoo CEO Tanya Peterson said there are two plans in place for their arrival, a short-term plan and a long-term plan.
The short-term one, which will cost between $3 million and $5 million, requires renovating an existing facility for the fuzzy newcomers. The second plan involves building them an entirely new habitat that will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million.
There are only about 2,500 pandas left in the world. Of those, about 600 are in zoos or human-controlled areas.
San Francisco isn’t the only California city that is getting pandas.
In February, San Diego announced it would be getting a pair of pandas, the first time in more than two decades that Beijing signed off on sending them to the United States. Currently, there are only four giant pandas in the U.S., and they all reside in Atlanta. China did not renew loan agreements in Washington, D.C., or Memphis. In November last year, pandas Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and their 3-year-old cub Xiao Qi Ji left the Smithsonian Zoo in the nation’s capital, much to the dismay of the public and animal lovers.
San Francisco’s campaign to get the pandas comes at a time when there have been serious safety concerns about the 95-year-old zoo.
In May, a 500-pound grizzly bear got out of her den, a concrete enclosure, and chased a zookeeper around an adjoining grotto, which dates back to the Great Depression. The zookeeper managed to escape through a gate, but the bear was found roaming around the keeper’s area. Other employees managed to get the grizzly into her other outdoor habitat and locked the doors behind her.
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The zoo has since implemented a “buddy system” to keep workers safe.
An investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle, published one day before news of the giant pandas broke, showed that the incidents involving employee safety and animal welfare were rampant and had caused many workers to resign or say they had serious concerns about how the zoo was managed.