Helsinki: Finland will return two giant pandas on loan from China more than eight years ahead of schedule because of financial problems at the zoo where they are housed, its chair told AFP on Wednesday.
The giant pandas named Jin Bao Bao (Lumi, or 'Snow' in Finnish) and Hua Bao (Pyry, or 'Blizzard'), which arrived in Finland in 2018, will be returned by the end of this year.
The pandas were to be returned after 15 years but "our economical situation does not allow us to keep the pandas anymore" Ahtari Zoo's board chairman Risto Sivonen said.
An agreement to loan the animals to Finland was sealed during a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2017.
"At that time we were very sure this was the right decision," Sivonen said.
But declining visitor numbers because of the Covid pandemic, and higher interest rates and inflation following Russia's war in Ukraine, have impacted the zoo's finances.
"The cost for the panda house was 8.5 million euros ($9.5 million) and the annual cost for keeping the pandas is 1.5 million euros," he said.
The agreement to return the pair was reached with the zoo's partners in China on September 20.
By the end of October, the pandas, which are in "very good shape" according to Sivonen, will be placed in quarantine for a minimum of one month in Finland before making the trip home.
The black and white mammals are immensely popular around the world, and China loans them out as part of a "panda diplomacy" programme to foster foreign ties.
There are an estimated 1,860 giant pandas remaining in the wild, mainly in bamboo forests in the mountains of China, according to environmental group WWF.
About 600 are in captivity in panda centres, zoos and wildlife parks around the world.
