France Bids Emotional Farewell To First Giant Panda Ever Born In The Country As He Heads To China

A giant panda was emotionally sent on a journey from France to China this Tuesday, July 25.

Yuan Meng was the first of his species to ever be born in captivity in France, and lived at Beauval Zoo in Saint-Aignan, in the Loire region of the country since 2017.

In 2012, his parents, Yuan Zi and Huan Huan were loaned to the French facility by the Chinese authorities, the first time such an initiative had occurred.

The panda will now wing his way back to his ancestral homeland where he will start a new life at a zoo in the city of Chengdu, as reported by france24.com.

The panda was given a police escort to the airport

He was cheered off by teary-eyed zoo staff and visitors from Beauval and even honoured with a police escort all the way to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

His keepers had been preparing Yuan Meng for today’s 12-hour China Airlines flight. As they loaded him onto the aircraft he quite happily made his way into a cage filled with bamboo that had been designed especially for the panda’s historic trip.

Rodolphe Delord, the zoo’s boss commented: ‘Everything went well. He said goodbye to his parents and his sisters, with tears in the eyes of his keepers’.

He added: ‘He can now continue to live his good life. It’s inevitably a moment of emotion, but all our animals born here are forced to leave one day. We’re used to that’.

China loans these giant pandas to foreign zoos

China has historically overlooked differences with countries including Taiwan and the United States by gifting these beautiful animals to foreign zoos.

As a part of Beijing’s foreign policy aims, this so-called ‘panda diplomacy’ ultimately helps to keep the species in existence. Any offspring they produce must be returned to China within a few years of being born.

Once he arrives in Chengdu, Yuan Meng will be taken to a panda reproduction centre where part of his life will be dedicated to the continued survival of his species as part of China’s breeding programme.

According to WWF, the environmental group, an estimated 1,860 giant pandas still live in the wild. They mainly inhabit the mountainous regions of China where there are large swathes of bamboo forests. Panda centres, zoos and wildlife parks around the world also currently house around 600 of these pandas.