Giant Panda in a Climbing Enclosure at the San Diego Zoo

The San Diego Zoo ran a research partnership with China's Wolong and Chengdu panda centers from 1996 to 2019, housing giant pandas including Bai Yun, Gao Gao, and cubs born on-site such as Hua Mei and Su Lin. Its panda habitat was built with bamboo groves, climbing logs, and pools to approximate the bamboo forests of China's Sichuan mountains, the species' only native range. Giant pandas are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN, with roughly 1,800 left in the wild. The San Diego program ended in 2019 when its last pandas were returned to China, closing out more than two decades of collaborative breeding and research.

Photo taken in November 2011.