Giant pandas’ five years at Toronto Zoo nearly up
Panda-monium leaves the city on March 18, heads to Calgary
Crowds saying goodbye to Toronto Zoo’s roly-poly royalty are expected to swell until March 18, when the five-year panda visit ambles to an adorable end. Mayor John Tory and his 4-year-old granddaughter, Piper, were among those lining three and four deep at the enclosure Sunday to spy giant pandas Da Mao and Er Shun, who arrived in March 2013, and their cubs Jia Panpan and Jia Yueyue born in October 2015.
Tory reminisced about getting to hold the Toronto-born cubs two years ago, when they became part of the public exhibit.
“It’s like holding two little teddy bears, and they were hardly moving, you could sort of feel that they were breathing but otherwise you wouldn’t really know they were real. It’s exciting to see them grow up and it’s been exciting to have them here for five years,” he told reporters.
“I just hope they come back — not these ones necessarily, but some other time because it’s a great education for kids. There are 1,600 pandas in the world in the wild — that is indicative of something we’ve done wrong but hopefully people can be educated about that,” the mayor said, adding he hopes many visitors learned from the interpretative centre about habitat conservation abroad and at home.
The pandas were lent by the Chinese government to Canada for a decade as part of an international breeding program. They will fly to Calgary for the second half of their Canadian stay at a newly constructed Panda Passage enclosure. During the Toronto visit giant pandas were downgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” status after a census found1,864 of them in the wild in China.
Toronto Zoo is extending visiting hours during March break to 6 p.m., with the last people allowed to enter daily at 5 p.m.
The beasts were a hit on YouTube, frolicking in snow and comically tumbling about, but big expenses made them a financial flop for the zoo.