The last panda in Latin America? Mexico to decide what happens next (2024)
Watching Xin Xin, Gual smiled as he remembered the July 1, 1990 morning when her mother Tohui surprised everyone at the zoo by giving birth to a four-ounce Xin Xin, far from the camera that recorded her movements 24 hours a day.
“It’s impossible not to have an attachment to these animals,” Gual said. “We saw most of them being born here.” Tohui was the second panda ever born outside China, and the first to survive infancy, living to age 12. Pop star Yuri released a song expressing the city’s pride and excitement.
The life expectancy of a giant panda in the wild is about 15 years, but in captivity they have lived to be as old as 38. Decades of conservation efforts in the wild and study in captivity saved the giant panda from extinction, increasing its population from fewer than 1,000 at one time to more than 1,800 today in the wild and captivity.
Mexico’s remarkable success makes it one of only two zoos to run a panda program outside the control of the Chinese government, according to the Congressional Research Service. The other is in Taiwan, which received two pandas in 2008 in exchange of a pair of endangered sika deer.
Eight pandas have been born at in Mexico, of whom five survived to adulthood. Decades of study at the Chapultepec Zoo have yielded extensive knowledge, as well as genetic material — cryogenically preserved sem*n and ovarian tissue — that scientists here hope will allow them to continue assisting in the pandas’ conservation even after Xin Xin is gone.
Carlos Cerda Dueñas, a researcher at the Monterrey Institute of Technology who has studied panda diplomacy, said that Mexico’s strategic importance could encourage China to make a deal, but that López Obrador’s preference for austerity could make reaching an agreement “very difficult.”
China’s suspended new panda loans for a time during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the government of President Xi Jinping recently revived it, sending a pair of pandas to World Cup host Qatar.
China is Mexico’s second most important trade partner, behind the United States, and China’s government has been working to expand its influence in Latin America. The possibility of leaving the region without any pandas could be leverage for Mexico.
What is not in doubt is the drawing power of the pandas.
At the Chapultepec Zoo there is a panda museum displaying photographs of the animals over the years, plaster casts of their footprints, bits of panda hair and dozens of children’s drawings. Shuan Shuan’s last birthday piñata is there too.
But Xin Xin is the real attraction. She got a birthday piñata, shaped like a panda and stuffed with apples and carrots, on July 1.
On a recent day, Juan Vicente Araya of Costa Rica marveled at Xin Xin, alongside his family.
“When we decided to travel to Mexico, from the oldest to the youngest, everyone at home came with the dream of being able to see a panda,” Araya said, as he patted the head of his young son, who was playing with a stuffed panda his parents bought him on the visit.
Araya, who works for a U.S. company, said the first thing his group of family and friends did after arriving in Mexico City from Costa Rica was to go to the zoo to see Xin Xin.
“In Latin America we don’t have a lot of opportunities to see a panda,” he said. “The truth is it was worth it for us to come from Costa Rica. We’re very excited to meet her.”
Xin Xin was born in Mexico. She is the remaining member of a line of pandas China gifted to foreign nations during the 1970s and 1980s. But she is nearing the end of her life and it is not clear whether Mexico will pay for getting another one. Xin Xin lives at Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City.
Xin Xin is the granddaughter of two pandas given to Mexico during the 1970s, at a time of different Chinese panda policy. Before 1985, China used its giant pandas as pawns in geopolitical diplomacy, bequeathing the rare animals as gifts to curry favor.
The pandas' departure from DC leaves Zoo Atlanta as the last home for the bears in the United States, with those pandas expected to return to China in 2024.
The only other place in the Americas where people can see pandas is in Mexico City at the Chapultepec Zoo. Xin Xin is the last panda in Latin America and is not on loan from China. That's because she's the only remaining bear descended from the giant pandas China gifted to foreign countries during the 1970s and 1980s.
Chi Chi died at London Zoo on 22 July 1972 and was mourned by the nation. A post mortem was conducted. Her remains, now a stuffed exhibit, are sitting in a glass case at London's Natural History Museum.
Xin Xin is a female giant panda that lives in the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City. Xin Xin (新新 "new" in Chinese) was conceived naturally and was born in the Zoo on 1 July 1990. Her mother is Tohui (she died 16 November 1993) and her father is Chia Chia from the London Zoo (died in Mexico on 13 October 1991).
They were part of China's early “panda diplomacy,” a period when the charismatic animals were gifted to countries around the world. In 1984, China ended panda gifts, switching to a policy of high-priced loans. This history has made Mexico one of a few countries able to keep locally born panda cubs.
China, home to the only natural habitat for pandas, has ownership of most of the giant pandas in the world. Panda diplomacy can trace its roots back to as early as 685 A.D. during the Tang Dynasty, when Empress Wu Zetian presented two pandas as a gift to the Japanese emperor.
Giant pandas are native to central China and have come to symbolize vulnerable species. As few as 1,864 giant pandas live in their native habitat, while another 600 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers around the world.
In addition to Atlanta and Washington D.C. zoos, the Memphis Zoo and the San Diego Zoo were the only others in the U.S. to have housed giant pandas. Memphis returned its last surviving panda in April 2023. San Diego returned its pandas in 2019 more than three decades after the first couple's arrival in 1987.
Bamboo contains very little nutritional value so pandas must eat 12-38kg every day to meet their energy needs. But they do branch out, with about 1% of their diet comprising other plants and even meat. While they are almost entirely vegetarian, pandas will sometimes hunt for pikas and other small rodents.
The encounter led him down a rabbit hole to 1970s Mexico, when the country had effectively recognized China's authority over Taiwan at the United Nations. Soon, other Latin American countries followed suit, and China gifted two giant pandas, Pe Pe and Ying Ying, to the Mexican zoo in 1975.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) — The Memphis Zoo has revealed the cause of death of Le Le, the giant panda that passed away last month. According to Rebecca Winchester, the zoo's communications specialist, Le Le died of heart disease.
The mutation causing the brown coats was only present in two pandas hailing from the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi, not Sichuan province, where the majority of China's giant pandas live. The Qinling panda (Brown Panda) is endangered. In fact, there are only around 100 Qinling pandas still living in the wild.
Introduction: My name is Allyn Kozey, I am a outstanding, colorful, adventurous, encouraging, zealous, tender, helpful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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