Officials with the Calgary Zoo are expressing concern for two giant pandas who keep on being at the facility despite a lowering provide of bamboo, their key food stuff source.
The zoo announced in May possibly that pandas Er Shun and Da Mao would be heading home to China due to worries related with accessing fresh new bamboo amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Wednesday, the zoo launched an update, indicating it had not but been equipped to safe international travel permits to relocate the pandas.
“The Calgary Zoo is at this time only capable to source fresh new bamboo reliably from British Columbia, and this provide is anticipated to operate out in September,” the zoo warned.
In accordance to a information release, the pandas are in good wellness but the zoo “feels their protection and perfectly-staying is in jeopardy.”
“If there is any possibility that the zoo cannot convey bamboo to the pandas, the zoo wants to provide the pandas to the bamboo.”
According to the zoo, 99 for every cent of a giant panda’s diet program is designed up of fresh new bamboo and just about every adult large panda consumes close to 40 kilograms of bamboo daily.
In an e mail to World News, the zoo mentioned the bamboo comes from a single supplier on Salt Spring Island, B.C.
“Our giant pandas are consuming it more quickly than it can expand,” they mentioned. “We will use up anything our provider has and then the plants go dormant for winter season [and] do not create any a lot more bamboo that our pandas have to have to consume day by day.”
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Calgary Zoo says big pandas heading back to China
“We consider the best and most secure spot for Er Shun and Da Mao to be in the course of these tough and unparalleled moments is the place bamboo is ample and effortless to obtain,” Calgary Zoo president and CEO Clément Lanthier claimed.
“The ongoing delays in intercontinental allowing is putting the health and fitness and welfare of these two wonderful giant pandas in jeopardy.”
The Calgary Zoo’s main running officer, Greg Royer, explained the uncertainty is challenging.
“The upcoming retains an not known supply of bamboo, an unfamiliar source of transportation routes and unidentified portions and unknown charges and the Calgary Zoo’s conventional of animal care doesn’t do effectively with unknowns,” Royer mentioned.
He said time is jogging out.
“We are at ease with provide to the finish of September but just after that we have to get far extra innovative on how we transportation bamboo to the Calgary zoo and that problems us,” Royer claimed.
He stated there is a great deal of shifting parts to the approach to ship them back household to China.
“It’s not like there’s any villains, nobody is making an attempt to cease the pandas from going back again, but there is a good deal of persons included and we will need a couple heroes to stage up and press as a result of the paperwork and present us with flights,” Royer claimed. “It’s a pretty complicated circumstance and all the things has to come with each other at the same time and it does not support to have flight with out permits and does not aid to have permits without the need of flights.”
Frequent website visitors to the zoo are awkward with the reality. Meagan Jacques explained a person needs to get enthusiastic to do something.
“Why should they starve due to the fact they can not get the bamboo listed here, it’s seriously upsetting and they have to have to make an exception someplace,” Jacques reported.
Zoocheck, a Canadian-dependent intercontinental wildlife safety charity weighed in. A single of the organization’s administrators, Barry MacKay, claimed animals should not be in captivity in the to start with area.
“My issue is worst situation state of affairs, starvation main to euthanasia, I know they would in no way let that transpire but that is just how dire it is,” MacKay said.
The pandas initial arrived in Canada in 2014 as aspect of a 10-calendar year arrangement amongst Canada and China.
Following expending five yrs at the Toronto Zoo, the two grownup large pandas travelled to the Calgary Zoo in March 2018 with cubs Jia Panpan and Jia Yueyue.
The cubs then returned dwelling to China in January, leaving just their mom and dad to wander the Calgary Zoo’s Panda Passage show.




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