Zoo Vienna Renews Panda Contract

/ Post by Giant Panda Zoo via Pandas International

Negotiations between Austria and China over pandas are finished and the panda pair will stay in Vienna for 10 more years. Yang Yang & Long Hui came to Zoo Vienna in March 2003 from the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda in Wolong. The 10 year loan contract was scheduled to end in March 2013, but the zoo asked to renewed their contract.

The panda pair have been a big hit in Vienna and just four years after their arrival, the pair gave the Schönrunn Zoo a very special gift.  Fu Long was born in August 2007. Not really unusual in the case of most mammals, but a small miracle with the highly endangered panda. Fu Long was Europe’s first panda baby to be conceived naturally. Journalists flocked to the zoo and pictures of the baby panda went around the world. In November 2009, at the age of two, having been weaned off his mother and  in accordance with the agreement with the Peoples Republic of China, Fu Long was moved to the Panda Breeding and Research Centre in Bifengxia in the South Chinese Province of Sichuan.

But the thousands of panda fans in Vienna did not have to wait too long: exactly three years to the day after Fu Long’s birth, a second baby of this endangered species was born: Fu Hu or “Lucky Tiger”.  Fu Hu’s birth confirmed once again China’s choice of Schönbrunn as a cooperation partner for breeding this highly endangered species of bear.  Fu Hu was returned to China earlier this year.