Panda Express Hits San Diego at Last

Like international royalty, the giant pandas Shi Shi and Bai Yun arrived Tuesday at the San Diego Zoo in a high-security motorcade escorted by the California Highway Patrol and trailed by news crews.

The phenomenon known locally as “pandamonium” was in full evidence as the charismatic but endangered mammals arrived for a 12-year visit for research, breeding and display purposes.

“This truly is the beginning of the North American rescue plan for giant pandas,” zoo President Bill Fox said. San Diego television stations provided live coverage of the pandas’ arrival. Residents lined the streets leading to the zoo, hoping for a glimpse of the fuzzy black-and-white animals from China, which were kept hidden in crates inside a covered van.

The public will have to wait to see Shi Shi and Bai Yun. The pandas will be kept off display during a 30- to 45-day quarantine and adjustment period required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The afternoon motorcade was the final leg of a journey that began with a 5,949-mile flight on Air China from Shanghai to San Francisco and then a charter flight to San Diego’s Lindbergh Field.

The zoo’s bid to import pandas had experienced so many setbacks in the last four years that zoo veterinarian Don Janssen, who accompanied Shi Shi and Bai Yun from Shanghai, said he was worried that there would be a last-minute snag.

“We didn’t really believe it was going to happen until the hatch closed and we were taxiing on the runway” in Shanghai, Janssen said.

In flight, the pandas slept, ate bamboo and drank bottled water as Janssen stood watch. In San Diego, Shi Shi and Bai Yun were put in the care of animal keepers dressed in the kind of gear used by hazardous-material handlers to prevent contamination.

When pandas were at the zoo in 1987 and 1988, patrons would line up outside the gates each morning and then sprint to the panda enclosure when the zoo opened. Starting in 1937 at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, pandas have established themselves as the most popular animals ever to appear at American zoos.

To get the pandas the San Diego Zoo spent $3 million and four years of effort wading through the intricacies of U.S. politics, Chinese politics and international politics.

The only other panda in the United States is at the National Zoo in Washington. Dozens of other zoos are clamoring for them, but there will be no additional import permits issued until the Fish and Wildlife Service finishes reviewing its panda policy.

The San Diego Zoo was allowed to import pandas in advance of the policy being made final because its application was pending when the Wildlife Service, worried that importing pandas could hasten the species’ extinction, established a moratorium in 1993.

Under an agreement drafted by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, the zoo will not be able to make a profit from increased sales of tickets or souvenirs because of the pandas. All profits must be recycled into research on endangered animals or habitat preservation in the highlands of central China, the only place in the world where pandas are native.

Fewer than 1,000 pandas are thought to exist in the wild, their numbers being depleted by rampant deforestation, poaching and the pandas’ quixotic mating habits. Babbitt is adamant that no pandas be caught in the wild for the purpose of being exported to U.S. zoos.

Shi Shi, a 16-year-old male, was taken into captivity four years ago after being mauled in a territorial fight. Bai Yun, a 5-year-old female, was born in captivity. Both lived at the Wolong Panda Preserve.

Even after the U.S. government gave its approval in 1995 to the import plan--under which the San Diego Zoo will pay the Chinese government $1 million a year--the proposal seemed threatened by infighting among Chinese bureaucracies and then a cooling of relations between the United States and China.

To break the logjam in Beijing, the zoo enlisted Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has ties to Chinese officials dating to her tenure as mayor of San Francisco. Feinstein prevailed on Chinese President Jiang Zemin to approve the panda plan.

The two animals, which have never met, will be kept apart most of the time, although zoo specialists hope Shi Shi and Bai Yun will become parents. However, panda reproduction in captivity is problematic. The females ovulate only one or two days each year. Also, captive females have been known to reject males, and captive males have been known to forget how to mount a female.

Zoo behaviorists will be studying how pandas communicate by “scenting,” that is, by leaving urine on trees. Any cubs born in captivity may stay in San Diego for three years but then must be sent to China.

Officials at the zoo expressed concern for Shi Shi. After being moved to a smaller enclosure this year at Wolong, he began pacing compulsively.

The zoo is in the midst of a controversy over its polar bears, which have begun similar behavior.

“We’re making no guarantees, but we’re hopeful that in our more enriched, spacious quarters that behavior will disappear, said behaviorist Don Lindburg.