CHENGDU CITY, SICHUAN PROVINCE, China (Reuters) — Female Giant Panda Bao Bao arrived at her new home in southwestern China’s Sichuan province late on Wednesday (February 22), after leaving the National Zoo in Washington D.C., United States.
The panda experienced a 16-hour flight in the crate and was then carried into a van directly from Chengdu’s Shuangliu airport to the Dujiangyan Base of China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP), where she a received warm welcome, the centre said.
Bao Bao sniffed around before walking into a 40-square-metre cage area.
Wei Rongping, Director of the CCRCGP Dujiangyan Base, said the panda would be quarantined in the cage for a month before meeting visitors, and they would make efforts to help Bao Bao get used to the new home.
“Because she was born in the United States and had been living there for over three years, so when she comes to a new environment we will enhance our feeding management. And at the same time, we will communicate with the U.S. breeder who came with her to gradually adjust her feeds, in order to let her adapt to our feeding methods at the Chinese research centre as soon as possible,” Wei said.
Bao Bao was born in the United States on Aug. 23, 2013. Her return to China is in keeping to an agreement with the Chinese Wildlife Conservation Association, the National Zoo said in a statement.
The program calls for panda cubs born at the zoo to be sent to China before they reach the age of four. Bao Bao is the first to make the trip under the current agreement, signed in 2015.
The first surviving cub born at the zoo since 2005, Bao Bao achieved international fame as the star of the zoo’s “panda cam,” which documented her birth and childhood for millions of fans worldwide.
Bao Bao is the offspring of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, the National Zoo’s second pair of giant pandas, loaned from China in 2000.
The couple produced the zoo’s first surviving cub on July 9, 2005, named Tai Shan, who left for China’s Wolong Nature Reserve some four years later.