10 years www. Giant Panda Zoo .com
On October 15, 2000 the first edition of this website went online. Today I am proud to celebrate the 10th anniversary of www.GiantPandaZoo.com. For the past ten years I have tried to “spread the word” about giant pandas.
The year 2000, it doesn’t look so long but it was a different world… Let’s go back in time…
We just had internet at our house (as many people around the world). And it was very slow, the old dial-up telephone line internet… E-mail? Google? Facebook? Twitter? Flickr? WordPress? Blogs? What is that? Now it is so fast and you can find anything on the internet…
Hsing Hsing in Washington D.C. & Yen Yen in Paris just died. Zoo Berlin was the only European Zoo with giant pandas… Bao Bao now lives in Berlin for 30 years (a record outside of China!), but he’s not the only panda. In 2010 cubs were born in Vienna & Madrid. We only could dream about that in 2000… Hua Mei became one year in San Diego and Rau Hin was just born in Shirahama, they were the first of the new generation of giant pandas born outside of China. 2000 was the first year with 20 panda births around the world (18 in China)… Adventure World Shirahama, San Diego Zoo & Zoo Atlanta were the only zoos with pandas on breeding loans. Kobe Oji Zoo & National Zoo received their breeding pairs that year…
I became fascinated by these black and white bears from China when they visited Belgium in the Summer of 1987. So many people around the world like them and I am so happy that there are still giant pandas to visit with my children… My Pambassador adventure in Chengdu made me realize even more how important the work of the researchers in Chengdu, Wolong and all panda zoos around the world has been. Without that there would be no more giant pandas… It even looks like the world became a little better for giant pandas…
I hope I can keep on spreading the word about giant pandas… And I hope we all can keep supporting the important panda conservation work in China. They do great work, but there is still much work to do…
