From a technical and legalistic perspective, you're completely correct. I used the word "ending" as opposed to "not being renewed" and that isn't legalistic; though in the world of public relations and communicating with the public, a renewed agreement and a new contract with the same public result are often conflated. Still, that was a bit of rhetorical laziness on my part.
The
Los Angeles Times coverage mentions the agreement was previously threatened fourteen years ago but it was solved and "the agreement was extended", however, which suggests extensions have been done before. If this was a separate, new contract, someone may feel free to correct me, but it appears agreements have been extended in the past, so it's still an unusual circumstance for them to be ended, much less multiple agreements across several countries all at once; Adelaide and Edinburgh were all very recent. We have acknowledged the Memphis situation was more tense as well.
I'm really not trying to start a whole debate about the legalistic side of this, the contracts being over is not what I meant to dispute, and I'm very obviously not the one in the room when the agreements are being drawn up and discussed. I can, however, judge the public relations side of it, and I maintain my position that the parties involved, China or the US zoos, could be more transparent about the situation. Stopping these editorials from politicizing the situation is entirely within their power if the only issue at hand is that the pandas are geriatric. You can issue a public statement to the press and say the animals are post-reproductive and negotiations will be for younger animals to continue the breeding program. That would not have caused any problems that are not already happening and would have solved some.
