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Facing a troublesome re-election combat in San Francisco, Mayor London Breed has already proposed constructing a soccer stadium instead of an underused mall, including a school to the hollowed-out downtown and filling the town’s quiet streets with vigorous evening markets.
But now, Ms. Breed has a brand new thought to reverse the town’s post-pandemic woes: big pandas.
She returned Sunday from China wheeling a baggage cart by means of San Francisco International Airport with stuffed toy pandas brimming from the tops of her baggage. Her greatest coup abroad was securing an settlement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association to have pandas take up residence on the San Francisco Zoo for the primary time.
“Everyone is really enthusiastic about pandas,” Ms. Breed mentioned on the airport. “It represents a lot pleasure.”
The arrival of the black-and-white superstars may very well be an financial boon for a metropolis hit exhausting by the pandemic.
They might additionally give Ms. Breed a private enhance as she tries to shore up help among the many pissed off citizens in San Francisco. Voters, significantly these of Asian descent who make up about 37 % of the inhabitants, have informed pollsters that they don’t approve of the job the mayor is doing, and Ms. Breed and her challengers are combating exhausting to win them over.
Securing the pandas would even be a marked distinction from final 12 months, when two grownup pandas and their 3-year-old cub have been moved out of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and flown again to China aboard a FedEx Boeing 777 known as the Panda Express.
Pandas had lived on the National Zoo since 1972, once they have been supplied as a diplomatic gesture from China after President Richard M. Nixon and Patricia Nixon, the primary woman, fawned over pandas on a 1972 journey to Beijing.
Speculation was that China was taking again its pandas due to rising tensions with the United States. A zoo in Atlanta is now the one web site within the United States housing pandas, although the San Diego Zoo is ready to obtain a pair, maybe as quickly as this summer season.
The San Francisco pandas will come later — the town hopes by early subsequent 12 months — pending fund-raising for a brand new panda enclosure. Engineers from Beijing have already visited the zoo to evaluate the positioning.
Pandas have solely performed vacationer in San Francisco earlier than, stopping in 1984 and once more in 1985 as a part of a worldwide tour — again when Dianne Feinstein was mayor and Joe Montana performed quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. Loads has modified since then, however not the pull of valuable pandas.
Ms. Breed described seeing a panda within the flesh for the primary time in a wildlife park in Shanghai. The feminine panda walked, ate, picked issues up and seemingly seemed proper at Ms. Breed.
“It was as if she needed to have a dialog,” Ms. Breed mentioned.
The metropolis’s first Chinese American mayor, Ed Lee, had pushed to deliver pandas to the San Francisco Zoo earlier than his demise in 2017.
The thought superior after San Francisco hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation convention in November.
President Xi Jinping of China met with President Biden at an property south of the town to debate main points together with synthetic intelligence, Taiwan and fentanyl — however not pandas. Mr. Xi shocked administration officers that evening when he mentioned at a dinner with enterprise leaders that he needed to proceed the panda partnership with the United States, singling out California particularly.
In February, the China Wildlife Conservation Association reached a lending settlement with the San Diego Zoo. That similar month, Ms. Breed and scores of native Asian leaders despatched a letter to Mr. Xi, urging that San Francisco obtain pandas.
The announcement got here because the San Francisco Zoo faces one other spherical of scrutiny over its operations. Last week, whereas Ms. Breed was in China, The San Francisco Chronicle revealed an investigation into the zoo, describing how some workers mentioned they have been involved about animal welfare and employee security on the 95-year-old establishment.
The zoo has confronted years of turmoil. In 2000, youngsters, eager to impress their girlfriends with uncommon Christmas presents, stole two koalas earlier than police recovered them. On Christmas in 2007, a Siberian tiger escaped from her enclosure and killed a 17-year-old boy and injured two of his buddies who had been taunting her. In 2014, a child gorilla was crushed by an enclosure door and killed. A hoop-tailed lemur was kidnapped from the zoo in 2020.
Vitus Leung, deputy director of the San Francisco Zoo and Gardens, mentioned in an announcement that the zoo undergoes inspections from a number of regulatory our bodies, together with the United States Department of Agriculture, and “we should not have any noncompliance points.” He additionally mentioned that the zoo had been licensed for the subsequent few years by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums after an in depth accreditation course of.
“Chinese engineers and panda specialists have visited the San Francisco Zoo twice and, after a radical evaluation of many areas and departments of the Zoo, have decided that we’re able to obtain Giant Pandas within the close to future,” Mr. Leung mentioned.
Carmen Chu, the town administrator, was a part of a delegation of roughly 30 officers and enterprise leaders who accompanied Ms. Breed to China. The delegation “not solely labored the panda factor” but in addition pushed for extra direct flights from China to San Francisco. Before the pandemic, there have been 50 such flights every week, however now there are simply 20, Ms. Chu mentioned.
She mentioned San Francisco leaders not solely needed to safe a pair of pandas however hoped to see them produce cubs. Unlike so many San Francisco households that transfer to the suburbs after infants come alongside, this one would stay within the metropolis — at the least till China calls them house.
