AP.- Xin Xin, the last panda in Latin America, is not just any bear. Originally from Mexico, he is the only living descendant in the entire continent of a group of giant pandas that China donated overseas in the 1970s and 1980s.
Chapultepec is one of only two zoos in the world that own pandas without direct oversight from the Chinese government. It was that he sees his end getting closer and closer after nearly 50 years because Xin Xin, the granddaughter of pandas given by China in the 70s she had no puppies and is menopausal at 32 years old.
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The line’s future could end if Mexico continues without deciding to pay a million dollars a year to receive a new crop of loans from China on 10 to 15-year loans.
After the death in July of the aunt of Xin Xin, Shuan Shuan, Mexican officials have started talks with the Chinese ambassador Mexico. The Asian giant now lends giant pandas for that period and that annual amount, with the idea of supporting bear conservation in that country.
The austere administration of the president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, He has not yet declared whether he would accept this operation
“Definitely, some other scheme will have to be found, but, well, it will depend a lot on both countries’ will and needs,” said Mexico City Zoos and Wildlife Conservation Director General Fernando Gual.
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Xin Xin is a third generation Mexican panda whose lineage goes back to Pe Pe and Ying Ying who recovered Chapultepec in 1975 as part of China’s so-called “panda diplomacy,” a time when charismatic animals were given as gifts to countries around the world to project the country’s positive image and boost its publicity to foreign audiences.
In 1984, China he ended that gift program and switched to a policy of borrowing from his bears at high prices.
The new policy done Mexico in one of the few countries able to keep panda cubs born locally. Since 1985, the loan program has forced zoos to return cubs China.
Eight pandas were born Mexico, of which five survived to adulthood. Decades of study in the Chapultepec Zoo have produced a wealth of knowledge, as well as the collection of sperm and ovarian tissue samples from some of their specimens that they keep in their bank of genomic resources that scientists hope will allow them to continue helping panda conservation even after Xin Xin se he will be gone.
