The San Francisco Zoo will receive a pair of pandas from China
When China announced that new giant pandas would be coming to the US soon, it set off a flurry of speculation as to which zoos might be the beneficiaries. San Diego Zoo was an obvious front runner, and I don't think anyone is expecting the National Zoo not to resume its work with the species. But who else might join the panda program?
I can honestly say, I was not expecting the answer to be San Francisco.
Despite being such a major US city, San Francisco has, for as long as I can remember, been a zoo that's squarely in the middle of the pack. It's not famous for its exhibits or its collections in the way that many zoos in less prominent cities (Omaha, Columbus, Fort Worth) are. There's been more than a little criticism of the zoo's governance in the press lately, and it's perhaps most famous for the fatal tiger attack (the only case of a zoo visitor being killed by an escaped animal at an AZA zoo that I've ever heard of), pushing 20 years ago.
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