Washington, D.C
Giant pandas begin their journey to DC's National Zoo
Panda-monium is back! … Or at least, on the way. A pair of 3-year-old giant pandas have begun their journey to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., according to officials from the China Wildlife Conservation Society and Chinese state-owned media.
Bao Li and Qing Bao will arrive nearly a year after the zoo’s last three pandas left for China, leaving D.C. without pandas for the first time in more than two decades.
At the time, it wasn’t clear when — or if — D.C. would ever again be home to giant pandas, but it turned out we wouldn’t have to wait all that long. In May, officials announced that China planned to send a pair of young pandas, male Bao Li and female Qing Bao. But at the time, they didn’t provide an official arrival date.
On Sunday night, according to Chinese state-owned media, Bao Li and Qing Bao left the Dujiangyan base of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in a special vehicle en route to Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport. They were set to then board a special flight to the D.C. area on Monday, according to the Chinese state-owned Xinhua News Agency, with a translation checked by NBC’s Peter Guo.
A spokesperson for the National Zoo declined to comment Monday, telling NBC: “For the safety of animals and staff, we are not able to confirm any details at this time. Thank you for your patience.”
The expected bundles of joy will come to the National Zoo under a 10-year breeding and research agreement between China and the U.S., the zoo has said.
Meet DC’s newest future residents: Giant pandas Bao Li and Qing Bao
Although the two were born in China, Bao Li (BOW-lee) has some major D.C. roots: He is the son of Bao Bao, who was born at the National Zoo in 2013. That makes him the grandchild of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, who lived at the Zoo for about 23 years before moving to China last November with their youngest offspring.
“The pandas’ arrival is not just an exciting event, but it’s proof positive of the success of our giant panda program,” National Zoo director Brandie Smith said when the plan was announced in May.
Roshan Patel, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute
Bao Li, whose name means “treasure” and “energetic” in Mandarin Chinese, was born Aug. 4, 2021, and lived at the Shenshuping Base in Wolong, China.
“Bao Li is just as handsome as his uncles, Tai Shan and Xiao Qi Ji,” Chinese ambassador Xie Feng said at a press conference in May, referring to two more of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian’s offspring, who were also born at the National Zoo. “I believe he is also excited for the upcoming trip from his hometown in Sichuan to D.C. to see the place where his family lived and get to know the friends here.”
As for Qing Bao (ching-BOW): “She is a star,” Xie said back in May. Qing Bao was made the ambassador of the ninth World Wildlife Day when she was a year old.
Qing Bao, whose name means “green” and “treasure,” was born Sept. 12, 2021, and lived at the Dujiangyan Base in Sichuan.
FedEx was expected to fly the new pair to the United States via its “Panda Express service.” Neither FedEx nor the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority provided public comment Monday.
The animals were expected to be quarantined for at least 30 days, and then allowed to settle in for a few weeks before the newly revamped panda exhibit opens to the public at the National Zoo.
“The public debut date will be announced as soon as the animal care team feels the bears are ready to meet visitors,” zoo officials previously said.
Under the new agreement, the National Zoo will pay $1 million per year to the China Wildlife Conservation Association to “support research and conservation efforts in China,” the zoo has said. That money does not come from federal funding, according to the zoo.
In May, the National Zoo said it was looking to raise $25 million to pay for renovations to the panda exhibit, upgrade the Giant Panda Cam, pay for costs of operating the panda exhibit and to support conservation efforts. It announced a $10 million donation from David Rubenstein last month.
The zoo said crews were also installing new climbing structures, water features and rockwork for exercise and play. A new ventilation system will improve air quality and temperature control, and the zoo also upgraded its smoke evacuation network to keep the pandas safer in an emergency, officials said.
Chinese ambassador Xie Feng revealed new details about the giant pandas coming to D.C.’s National Zoo.
China will retain ownership of the pandas, and any cubs must be returned to China by age 4 — similar to the previous agreement involving Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their offspring.
The Chinese ambassador hopes the agreement will bring joy to a new generation of families, he said in May.
“Over the past five decades, pandas have held a special place in the childhood memories of numerous Americans. Today, many of those happy kids have become grandpas and grandmas, dads and moms themselves. They look forward to taking their kids to the zoo to tell their stories with pandas and start new ones for their little boys and girls,” Xie said.
Giant pandas were a staple at D.C.’s National Zoo for over 50 years
The National Zoo’s longstanding resident pandas, Tian Tian and Mei Xiang, departed D.C. last fall, along with their youngest offspring, Xiao Qi Ji, who was born at the zoo in 2020. The three went to new homes in the China Wildlife Conservation Association, leaving the National Zoo’s giant panda habitat vacant for the first time in decades.
Pandas first arrived at the National Zoo in the 1970s and evolved into D.C.’s unofficial mascots. The black-and-white bears appeared on Metro farecards and street signs and as statues around the District.
The panda conservation program flourished after Tian Tian and Mei Xiang arrived in D.C. in 2000. Mei Xiang gave birth to four surviving cubs. Tai Shan was born in 2005, but his birth was followed by a long dry spell before a crushing blow: A cub born in 2012 lived for just a week.
The following August, we got both hope and sadness: A squirming newborn arrived, along with a stillborn twin. But as D.C. held its collective breath, the living cub thrived. Bao Bao squawked adorably during vet exams captured on video, tumbled (safely — whew!) down a pile of rocks, and even prolonged the excitement when the National Zoo’s webcam went dark during a government shutdown. When the cams went live again, she had a new surprise: Her eyes had opened.
Maybe it was just us, but Bao Bao always seemed to know when to drum up some attention. She was the source of some adorable headlines. (Case in point: Mei Xiang Cuddles Cub Rather Than Snacking.) There was a paternity drama — was her biological father the zoo’s own Tian Tian, or another male panda whose sperm was also used in a fertility attempt? (Verdict: Tian Tian IS the father.) And just before Christmas 2014, Bao Bao spent 24 hours in a tree, diverting focus from holiday celebrations before she finally climbed down.
But after becoming a big sister, Bao Bao was ready to strike out on her own. She moved to China — taking a similar FedEx journey as the rest of her family members ultimately did — and became a mom herself.
Bao Bao’s birth at the National Zoo was followed by two surviving younger brothers: Bei Bei in 2017 (who was born with a twin who died days after birth) and Xiao Ji Qi, the first panda in the U.S. born after his mother was artificially inseminated with frozen, instead of fresh, semen.
The agreement to keep Tian Tian and Mei Xiang was extended several times. The panda program has always served as a gesture of friendship and a sort of soft diplomacy between China and the United States. The pullback of pandas from the National Zoo and other zoos in the United States initially sparked some concern. Currently, there are only four pandas in the country – all at Atlanta’s zoo.
But in February, news that China would send a new pair of giant pandas to the San Diego Zoo signaled the return of panda diplomacy. The pair arrived in June and, after a period of settling into their new habitat, made their public debut in San Diego last month.
Despite the links with U.S.-China diplomacy, negotiations regarding pandas are conducted among researchers and aren’t based in politics, Smith told News4 last summer.
“We’re a bunch of scientists; we’re a bunch of animal people,” Smith said. “This is not a political conversation. This is absolutely a conversation between colleagues talking about, what’s best for the overall program, and also, what can be best for individual animals?”
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Among the liquor store, barber shop and dry cleaners at the Watergate Complex’s retail plaza, there is a new pop-up museum dedicated to the scene of the crime that toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency.
Among the liquor store, barber shop and dry cleaners at the Watergate Complex’s retail plaza, there is a new pop-up museum dedicated to the scene of the crime that toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency.
The temporary exhibit features the work of artist Laurie Munn — portraits of members of the Nixon administration and those connected to the Watergate break-in. The exhibit features members of Congress, the media and some who were on Nixon’s enemies list.
Keith Krom, chair of the Board of Directors of the Watergate Museum, told WTOP the exhibit was first featured in the gallery in 2012 for the 40th anniversary of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee.
“When she (Munn) learned about our museum effort, she offered to reassemble them as a way for us to expand awareness of the museum,” Krom said.
Krom, who lives in the Watergate, said his favorite portrait is of one of the special prosecutors, whose firing sparked the “Saturday Night Massacre” in 1973.
“I had the pleasure of being a student of Archibald Cox,” Krom said. “He served as my mentor for my third-year writing project.”
Krom said during this time, at the Boston University School of Law, he spent a great deal of time with him.
“I didn’t realize how much he must have gone through. Here he was, this one man, who was challenging the president of the United States over something pretty serious,” Krom said.
The pop-up opened in October and was recently extended to stay open until April 25. Krom said the hope is to find it a permanent location within the Watergate Complex, where they can “present the history of Watergate, but with two perspectives.”
The first would be on the building’s “architectural significance to D.C.,” he said.
“You may not like the design, you actually may hate it,” Krom said. “But you cannot deny that it changed D.C.’s skyline.”
The secondary focus would, of course, be on the mother of all presidential scandals that changed the course of American history.
“That’s where that suffix ‘-gate’ started and continues to be used for almost every scandal that comes out today,” Krom said.
The inspiration for the museum spawned from an interaction from a tourist outside the Watergate.
“He says, ‘This is the Watergate, right?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s one of the buildings,’” Krom recalled.
The tourist then asked Krom, “So where’s the museum?”
“I was like, ‘Oh, we don’t have a museum.’ And he literally just looked at me and said, ‘That’s so sad.’ And he got on his bike and rode away,” Krom said.
While the self-proclaimed political history nerd said he “still gets goose bumps” when he drives by the Capitol at night, Krom hopes that when people leave the museum, “they’ll walk away with a new appreciation for how our government works, the guardrails that are in place.”
“Maybe an understanding that those guardrails themselves are kind of frail, and they probably need our collective help in making sure they last — that’s what we hope to accomplish,” Krom said.
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According to the National Park Service at the National Mall, famous cherry blossoms around the nation’s capital have hit peak bloom conditions. The National Park Service X account for the National Mall proclaimed this morning, “PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM!”
It became apparent yesterday that the bloom would be at peak today. “Despite a sunny afternoon and patches of blue sky, the cherry blossoms remain at Stage 5: Puffy White,” the Park Service wrote on X yesterday. Stage 5, “Puffy White”, is the final stage blossoms go through before being in full bloom. They start at Stage 1 as a “Green Bud”, grow into Stage 2 with “Florets Visible”, and then florets become extended at Stage 3. In Stage 4, there is “Peduncle Elongation” which sets the stage for the puffy blossoms to appear in Stage 5. Puffy White and Peak Bloom are defined as when 70% of the blossoms on the trees reach that stage.
Peak bloom varies annually depending on weather conditions; the most likely time to reach peak bloom is between the last week of March and the first week of April. According to the Park Service, extraordinary warm or cool temperatures have resulted in peak bloom as early as March 15 in 1990 and as late as April 18 in 1958.
The planting of cherry trees in Washington DC originated in 1912 as a gift of friendship to the People of the United States from the People of Japan. In Japan, the flowering cherry tree, or “Sakura,” is an important flowering plant. The beauty of the cherry blossom is a symbol with rich meaning in Japanese culture.
Dr. David Fairchild, plant explorer and U.S. Department of Agriculture official, imported seventy-five flowering cherry trees and twenty-five single-flowered weeping types from the Yokohama Nursery Company in Japan. After experimenting with growing them on his own property in Maryland, he deemed that the cherry tree would be perfect to plant around the Washington DC area. This triggered an interest by a variety of individuals to plant the tree around Washington. In 1909 the Mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, donated 2,000 trees to the United States on behalf of his city. When the trees arrived, they were riddled with disease and insects and to protect other agriculture, they were burned. The Tokyo Mayor made a second donation of trees in 1910, this time amounting to 3,020 trees. This started the forest of cherry trees that now line the Potomac basin around Washington DC. In a gesture of gratitude back to Japan, President Taft sent a gift in 1915 of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan. Thousands of trees have been added since, including another gift of 3,800 trees from Japan in 1965.
WASHINGTON (7NEWS) — Authorities are searching for an SUV after an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) was struck by a hit-and-run driver in Southwest D.C. on Wednesday night.
The crash happened just before 10 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Forrester Street, SW.
Police confirmed the officer, an adult man, was conscious and breathing when he was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment of his injuries. There is no word on his condition.
The driver involved fled the scene, and investigators are looking for a white Range Rover with a partial South Carolina tag of “403.”
Anyone with information is urged to call 202-727-9099 or text tips at 50411.
This is a developing story that will be updated as more information becomes available.
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