Finland will return two giant pandas to China in November, more than eight years ahead
of time, as the zoo where they live can no longer afford their upkeep, the chair of the zoo’s board told Reuters on Tuesday.
The pandas, named Lumi and Pyry, were brought to Finland in January 2018, months after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Nordic country and signed a joint agreement on protecting the animals.
Giant pandas roly-poly in the snow as they go on show for the first time at a Finland zoo. pic.twitter.com/tts3jsRU0o
— Greg Hogben (@MyDaughtersArmy) February 18, 2018
Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has sent pandas to foreign zoos to strengthen trading ties, cement foreign relations and boost its international image.
The Finnish agreement was for a stay of 15 years, but instead the pandas will soon go into a month-long quarantine before they are shipped back to China, according to Ahtari Zoo, the pandas’ current home.
The zoo, a private company, had invested over 8 million euros ($8.92 million) in the facility where the animals live and faced annual costs of 1.5 million euros for their upkeep, including a preservation fee paid to China, Ahtari Chair Risto Sivonen said.
The zoo had hoped the pandas would attract visitors to the central Finland location but last year said it had instead accumulated mounting debts as the pandemic curbed travel, and that it was discussing a return.
Rising inflation had added to the costs, the zoo said, and Finland’s government in 2023 rejected pleas for state funding. In all, negotiations to return the animals had lasted three ears, Sivonen said.
“Now we reached a point where the Chinese said it could be done,” Sivonen said.
The return of the pandas was a business decision made by the zoo which did not involve Finland’s government and should not impact relations between the two countries, a spokesperson for Finland’s foreign ministry said.
Despite efforts by China to aid the zoo, the two countries in the end jointly concluded after friendly consultations to return the pandas, the Chinese embassy in Helsinki said in a statement to Reuters.
(REUTERS)
In a career spanning three decades and counting, Ramananda (Ram to his friends) has been the foreign editor of The Telegraph, Outlook Magazine and the New Indian Express. He helped set up rediff.com’s editorial operations in San Jose and New York, helmed sify.com, and was the founder editor of India.com.
His work has featured in national and international publications like the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Global Times and Ashahi Shimbun. But his one constant over all these years, he says, has been the attempt to understand rising India’s place in the world.
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