Heavy snowfall welcomes giant pandas arriving in Finland

The fact that Finland received the first pair of giant pandas in the Nordic area signifies that mutual understanding between Finland and China has reached a very high level, said Finnish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Jari Leppa.

Leppa said he hoped cooperative research on giant pandas at the Ahtari Zoo would foster more scientific, economic and cultural cooperation between experts, institutes and enterprises of Finland and China.

Representing the Chinese Forest Administration, its chief engineer Ma Guangren said more countries in the world were working with Chinese authorities on the protection and research of giant pandas.

Thanks to the efforts made in China and worldwide, the habitat of giant pandas in China has expanded to a size of 2.58 million hectares. Currently, a total of 1,864 giant pandas live in the wild and 518 are raised in captivity in China, he said.

Negotiations over the giant pandas between Finland and China started in 2015 and made good progress, said the Finnish Agriculture and Forest Ministry in a press release. Documents about the joint research on giant pandas in the Ahtari Zoo were confirmed in April 2017 when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Finland.

An enormous panda house, spanning 10,000 sqm was built in 11 months in the Ahtari zoo to accommodate the animals. They will meet the public in late February during the Chinese spring festival.

It is anticipated that Hua Bao and Jin Baobao, both young and robust, will bear babies in the Finnish zoo. Any offspring will be sent back to China, according to the agreement between the two nations.