Red panda arrives at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, starts 30-day quarantine
A female red panda about five years old reached Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi on 27 October from a conservation office in Tak. Viewing date TBA.
Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi has a new resident: a female red panda about five years old. The zoo’s director, Narongwit Chodchoi, said on 28 October that she had arrived safely the evening before, at 17.30 on 27 October, from the wildlife conservation section of Protected Area Regional Office 14 in Tak province, Daily News and Post Today reported.
Quarantine first
A team of vets and keepers travelled with the red panda the whole way. At the zoo she lives in an air-conditioned nursery room, where she has started coming out to eat and explore. She will spend at least 30 days in quarantine, with further health checks under veterinary supervision, before the zoo assesses whether she is ready for the next step.
The zoo has not said when visitors will be able to see her, and the reports did not say how the red panda came into the conservation office’s care. We will update this story when the zoo announces more.
A protected species
Red pandas are listed in Appendix I of CITES, the convention that regulates international trade in endangered wildlife and plants, and the zoo said it puts the species’ welfare and conservation first. In the wild they live in the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China, so they are not native to Thailand, and the IUCN Red List classes them as endangered.
Visiting Khao Kheow
Our Khao Kheow day-trip guide covers getting there from Bangkok and planning the visit. The zoo is also home to Moo Deng, who became an aunt when a new pygmy hippo calf was born on 4 November. For more places to see animals, see our guide to where to see animals in Bangkok.
