Finnish zoo to return two pandas to China due to expensive animal maintenance
Kyiv • UNN
The Ehtiari Zoo in Finland will return two pandas, Lumi and Piri, to China due to the high cost of keeping them. The animals have been in Finland since 2018 under a 15-year agreement.
Finland's Ehtiari Zoo will return two pandas, Lumi and Piri, back to China. The zoo said that the reason for this is that the maintenance of the animals was too expensive. This was reported by The Guardian, according to UNN.
According to the newspaper, the Finnish zoo plans to return two pandas, Lumi and Piri, to China due to the rising cost of their maintenance. It is noted that the pandas were brought to Finland in January 2018, a few months after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Scandinavian country and signed a joint agreement on animal protection.
“The agreement with Finland was for the pandas to stay for 15 years, but instead the pandas will soon go into a month-long quarantine before being sent back to China. The zoo has invested more than €8 million in the facility where the animals live and faced annual costs of €1.5 million to maintain them. The zoo had hoped the pandas would attract visitors to central Finland, but last year said it had instead accumulated growing debts as the pandemic curbed travel,” the publication adds.
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