The panda-drought ends in California as San Diego Zoo's new arrivals welcome visitors

The San Diego Zoo opened a long-awaited giant panda exhibit to the public on Thursday, breathing new life into U.S.-Chinese panda diplomacy and delighting panda fans in California.

The special public unveiling of “Panda Ridge” was slated for noon local time on Thursday — a date proclaimed by Gov. Gavin Newsom as California Panda Day as he welcomed “envoys of friendship” from China.

The older panda, Yun Chuan (pronounced “yoon chu-an,” according to the zoo), is a male who is nearly 5 years old.

“His mother Zhen Zhen was born in 2007 and was the fourth cub born at the San Diego Zoo. He’s identifiable by his long, slightly pointed nose,” the zoo said.

Xin Bao (pronounced “sing bao”), a female, is almost 4. Her distinguishing features include a “large, round face and big, fluffy ears,” the zoo said.

They’re the first pandas to come to the United States in 21 years.

People wanting to visit the zoo on Thursday should expect “giant crowds, and heavy traffic,” according to NPR member station KPBS.

The zoo said that in addition to a standby line that opened hours before the exhibit, it would issue complimentary timed tickets to see the pandas. The zoo also offers a one-hour early-morning walking tour focusing on the animals, with a price starting at $92.

The San Diego Zoo has a long history of housing pandas, but it recently went five years without the well-loved animal after its last two pandas, Bai Yun and Xiao Liwu, were removed from their home in Panda Canyon in the spring of 2019.

The Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., also said farewell to its pandas last November, in what struck many local fans as an abrupt departure. For much of this year, Zoo Atlanta was the only U.S. zoo with giant pandas.

But earlier this year, both the National Zoo and the San Francisco Zoo announced they will also see the return of giant pandas, likely by the end of 2024 and in 2025, respectively, as Chinese officials have made fresh agreements with their U.S. counterparts.

China first sent pandas to the U.S. in 1972, in a program that was seen as both a relationship-building exercise for the two countries and a chance for conservation experts to collaborate to help the black-and-white bears’ population rebound.

Since then, giant pandas have come to the U.S. under a loan program, with the animals and their offspring remaining the property of China. Those loans were often extended, but the deals have shown the strain of U.S.-China relations in recent years.

In 2016, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature changed how it designates giant pandas on its list of threatened species, classifying them as “vulnerable” to extinction rather than endangered.