Giant pandas are coming back to Grant Park. The China Wildlife Conservation Association announced Friday that male panda Ping Ping and female panda Fu Shuang will be part of a decade-long conservation and research partnership with Zoo Atlanta, according to Georgia Public Broadcasting.
The news fills a gap that many Atlanta families have felt since Lun Lun, Yang Yang, and their Atlanta-born cubs left Zoo Atlanta in late 2024 after more than two decades in the city. Zoo Atlanta had been the only U.S. zoo to breed pandas successfully and regularly under its previous agreement with China, and losing them marked a quiet moment for one of the zoo's signature exhibits.
Ping Ping and Fu Shuang will settle into Zoo Atlanta's existing panda habitat, a landscaped enclosure that includes climbing structures, cooled indoor dens, and bamboo supplies sourced from multiple Southeast growers. Conservation partnerships like this one typically include shared research on reproduction, health, and habitat preservation, with funding from the U.S. partner supporting wild panda recovery programs in China.
For Grant Park, the return of pandas is a meaningful civic moment. The zoo is one of the neighborhood's largest draws, anchoring a stretch of historic housing, the park itself, and the cyclorama and Civil War history exhibits that sit on the zoo campus. World Cup visitors arriving in June and July will now have pandas back on the itinerary.
Zoo Atlanta has not yet released arrival or public-viewing dates for Ping Ping and Fu Shuang.
