Panda Archive

Lei Lei

雷雷

Lei Lei is a female giant panda born on 1989-01-01 in the wild of Qinling Mountains, Shaanxi Province, China. She was captured as a juvenile and entered captive management shortly after birth, with the official studbook number 341 assigned by the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens. She is the offspring of wild, unidentified giant panda parents native to the Qinling mountain ecosystem. No formal paternity or maternity testing was conducted for her prior to her death, so her direct genetic lineage outside of her species classification remains unconfirmed. Currently living at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, she participates in long-term captive research and breeding programs for giant pandas. The center is the world’s leading institution dedicated to giant panda conservation, housing dozens of captive individuals for research and protection. As one of the earliest wild-caught giant pandas integrated into the Chinese captive breeding program, Lei Lei contributed valuable data on giant panda adaptation to captive environments. She helped lay early groundwork for the captive breeding success that supported giant panda recovery, leading to the species’ downlisting from Endangered to Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2016.