The Calgary Zoo of Canada held a grand opening ceremony Monday morning to welcome four Chinese giant pandas, with dignitaries from the governments of China, Canada, Alberta province and Calgary city in attendance.

 

加拿大卡尔加里动物园周一上午举行盛大的开幕仪式，欢迎四只中国大熊猫加入，来自中国、加拿大、亚伯达省以及卡尔加里市政府的官员出席了欢迎仪式。
 

 

Calgarians finally get to meet the four pandas -- adult pandas Er Shun¹ and Da Mao and their cubs² Jia Panpan and Jia Yueyue which have settled here since the end of March.

 

Panda Passage at the Calgary Zoo is the new home for the four pandas. The adult pandas will live here for the next five years after having spent five years at the Toronto Zoo, and their cubs will return to China in one year and a half as part of an agreement between the two zoos and the Chinese government.

 

The Calgary Zoo will provide one million U.S. dollars to support the panda breeding program in China.

 

The panda family has moved into a brand new habitat that used to be the elephant enclosure. The zoo spent 100 million Canadian dollars (about 78 million U.S. dollars) renovating³ the space for the new tenants⁴ and hope they will be happy enough there to produce more cubs.

 

Taking good care of the pandas is a major undertaking⁵, and the zoo has to fly in bamboo from China a couple of times a week. Each panda eats some 40 kilograms of bamboo every day.

 

"We are very excited about this, and we are for sure expecting big crowds," said Dr. Clement⁶ Lanthier, president and CEO of the Calgary Zoo.

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