Pandas are no longer endangered. (Photo : Getty Images)
Bao Bao the Panda arrived in Chengdu to be part of a conservation and breeding program of the Chinese government. She was born in the Washington, D.C., National Zoo and is now 3-years-old.
She was born out of artificial insemination in 2013. According to the panda diplomacy being recognized all over the world, most of the world's pandas are on loan from China.
It is the panda diplomacy that states that cubs born abroad should be returned to China. Bao Bao is the 11th to come back home.
The diplomacy started in 1982 when the Chinese government put a stop on giving away pandas for gifts of goodwill. It was the same year that pandas were declared as endangered.
The Chinese government has given out a total of 23 pandas and most of them are dead. The bears were given to leaders of the U.S., the former Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of Korea.
Other countries like the U.S. would rent pandas from China while Japan, Britain, France, and Germany would borrow.
Proceeds of the rent money would go to the funding of the China panda conservation. The initiatives are now slowly paying off.
Pandas are no longer on the endangered species list, according to a statement released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature last year.
The report indicated that the panda count is now at 2,060, with adult pandas consisting of half of the group.
The increased number of pandas has reduced their status to "vulnerable" from "endangered." This means that the pandas are no longer at a higher risk of extinction.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on its website the work to continually save the pandas is reaching important milestones. The organization and the Chinese government are still working together to build bamboo corridors to sustain the panda's source of food.
