SAN DIEGO (AP) — China is sending pandas to the United States for the first time in more than two decades, to the delight of the San Diego Zoo, which is preparing to welcome a pair that may include a female offspring of Bai Yun and Gao could include Gao, two former zoo residents who were among the most successful panda partners in captivity.

The China Wildlife Conservation Association said Thursday that it had also signed agreements with the zoo in the Spanish capital Madrid and was in talks with zoos in Washington, D.C. and Vienna to allay fears that Beijing is continuing its historic panda diplomacy with Western nations due to China would end diplomatic tensions.

“We look forward to further expanding research results on protecting endangered species such as the giant panda and promoting mutual understanding and friendship between peoples through the new round of international cooperation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said in Beijing.

The partnership will include research on disease prevention and habitat protection and contribute to the construction of China’s national panda park, the organization said.

The black and white bears have long been a symbol of friendship between the United States and China, ever since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National Zoo in Washington, DC in 1972, ahead of the normalization of bilateral relations. China later loaned pandas to zoos to help raise cubs and expand the population.

However, only four giant pandas remain in the United States, all at the Atlanta zoo, after China failed to renew loan contracts at three other zoos in San Diego, Washington, DC and Memphis, Tennessee in recent years.

Cindy Rose has been coming to the San Diego Zoo for 40 years and visited Bai Yun before she and the bear son, her sixth cub, were sent back to China in 2019. They were the zoo’s last pandas.

“I’m so excited!” She said. “We love the pandas and it’s so great that one will be related to the one that was here.”

She and her husband, Randy Rose, took their grandson to the zoo on Thursday.

“It makes me feel good that this is a way to relieve tension,” Randy Rose said. “We have many differences, but we all love pandas. It’s fun to watch them eat bamboo and climb trees.”

San Diego Zoo officials told the Associated Press that the two bears, a male and a female, were expected to arrive by the end of the summer if all permits and other requirements are approved.

“We are very excited and hopeful,” said Megan Owen of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and vice president of Wildlife Conservation Science. “They have expressed tremendous enthusiasm to restart panda collaboration, starting with the San Diego Zoo.”

In November, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed hope that his country would send pandas to the United States again after he and President Joe Biden met in Northern California for their first face-to-face meeting in a year and vowed to ease tensions. At a dinner with business leaders on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco, Xi called the bears “envoys of friendship” and said he learned that the San Diego Zoo and the people of California are “very much looking forward to to welcome them.” Pandas back.”

Bai Yun, who was born in captivity in China, lived at the zoo for more than 20 years and gave birth to six cubs there. Her pal Gao Gao was born in the wild in China and lived at the San Diego Zoo from 2003 to 2018 before being sent back.

Decades of conservation efforts in the wild and captive studies saved the giant panda species from extinction and increased its population from fewer than 1,000 to over 1,800 each in the wild and in captivity.

Zoos typically pay a fee of $1 million a year for two pandas, with the money earmarked for China’s conservation efforts, according to a 2022 report by America’s Congressional Research Service. The pandas return to China after reaching old age and any cubs born are sent to China when they are around three or four years old.

The life expectancy of a giant panda in the wild is about 15 years, but in captivity they can live up to 38 years.

The United States, Spain and Austria were among the first countries to cooperate with China on panda conservation, and 28 pandas were born in these countries, China’s official Xinhua news agency said.

Calls for the return of the giant pandas, known as China’s “national treasure,” had grown louder among the Chinese public as unsubstantiated claims that U.S. zoos mistreated the pandas flooded Chinese social media.

The San Diego Zoo continued to work with its Chinese counterparts even after the pandas were no longer there.

The San Diego Zoo’s Owen said China was particularly interested in sharing information about the zoo’s successful captive breeding of pandas. Giant pandas are difficult to breed in part because the female’s reproductive window is extremely narrow, lasting only 48 to 72 hours each year.

Bai Yun’s first cub, Hua Mei, was the first panda born through artificial insemination to survive to adulthood outside of China. After she was sent to China, she gave birth to twelve cubs alone.

Meanwhile, Bai Yun remained at the zoo, where she gave birth to two more females and three males. Using cameras in their den, researchers observed them and helped understand maternal caregiving behavior, Owen said.

“We have a lot of institutional knowledge and capacity from our last collaborative agreement that we can bring to this next chapter and train the next generation of panda conservationists,” she said.

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Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.