Yan Yan Flies Back Home!

Safely stowed in two boxes – one with Yan Yan's skeleton, in the other her dermoplastics – the female panda left Berlin Tegel airport late in the evening in the direction of China. The specimen will be traveling for three days until it arrives in Xian. The next port of call for the panda will be the Shaanxi Wildlife Rescue and Research Center.

Yan Yan, which means the "Beauty" in English arrived in Berlin on a loan from Beijing in April 1995. Queues of people lined up in front of the gates of the Zoo in anticipation to see the new queen of hearts by Bao Bao's side in the capital. We hoped that some cute little panda offspring would result from the two, but despite many attempts right to the end, we were left disappointed. On 26 March 2007, the "Beauty" died at an age of 22 due to blocked bowels.

Since the remains of all pandas belong to the government of China, it was only a matter of time before Yan Yan was returned back to her homeland. At the end of last year, the female bear was meticulously prepared for this event in the workshops of the Museum of Natural History Berlin. The process of returning Yan Yan to her home then followed with great detail – but not without leaving an impression: Two taxidermists from the museum were invited by Beijing to train their Chinese colleagues in the art of panda preparation there in the past week.
Until recently, Yan Yan was a companion of Bao Bao (1978 - 2012) in the special "PANDA" exhibition in the Museum of Natural History Berlin – a fitting farewell for the two Zoo darlings. Bao Bao will be on exhibition there until the coming Sunday along with dozens of final farewells from panda fans for Yan Yan.
"Of course we would be delighted here at Zoo Berlin to home another panda pair in the near future. Yan Yan and Bao Bao allowed us to gain decades of experience in how pandas behave and how to manage them and together with our cooperation partners, such as the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) as well as the Museum of Natural History, we can now provide the very best conditions for optimal panda management", says Zoo Director Dr. Knieriem on Yan Yan's farewell.

Pandas are part of the large Great Bear family. At one time their habitat stretched from northeast China to Myanmar and Vietnam. These days the herbivores are only to be found in the sparse deciduous and coniferous forests of China's mountain regions around the provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Guanzu. The last major panda census revealed that in 2014, at least 1,864 animals lived in the wild – that is 17% more than in 2004 (according to the SFA, the State Forestry Administration of China). Despite all conservation efforts, the survival of the animals in the wild is still not yet secured – in truth, the Giant Panda is considered "critically endangered" according to the Red List of Threatened Species of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).