"A lot of people are very, very excited" to hear the news of Oakland being promised pandas by the Chinese government, Chang said.

The head of the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Base in China will be in Oakland on Dec. 2 to officially announce that the endangered creatures will come to the Oakland Zoo, he added.

Oakland officials have been negotiating and nurturing friendships with Chinese leaders for six years and meeting with people from the Panda Breeding Research Base to get the animals.

Chang said in May competition to lure pandas for research and study is fierce at American zoos. The animals, which are not actually in the bear family, are some of the most well-known endangered species in the world. Only about 800 pandas live in the wild in their native China, and their habitat is dwindling.

Seven pandas, on loan from China, live in zoos in the United States.

The Memphis Zoo acquired a pair last year after working nearly a decade to get them. The San Diego Zoo, the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., and Zoo Atlanta, in Georgia, also have pandas.

But paying for the pandas to live and breed in Oakland is not cheap.

China is asking for $10 million to loan the pair to the Oakland Zoo for 10 years. Zoo officials and panda supporters say they need to raise $5 million to $15 million to house the black-and-white creatures.

Unfortunately, money has been tight at the Oakland Zoo since 2001. And the once-popular Zoolights fund-raiser has been canceled this year after losing its major corporate sponsor.

Oakland has been high on the list to receive pandas because it is a multicultural city with strong ties to China and a large Chinese immigrant population, Chang said.

The weather is right for the animals to be comfortable here, and Oakland will work with researchers from the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine to study the genetics of the giant panda to further preservation efforts.

No one is quite sure how long it will take for the pandas to actually get to Oakland. Chang said the zoo is aggressively looking for new board members and East Bay Zoological Society members to help accelerate the process.

He added he would like to see Oakland school children take advantage of the zoo as a resource for animal education in the city.

The zoo was promised about $24 million from Oakland taxpayers when voters overwhelmingly passed Measure DD, the $198.25 million Oakland Trust for Clean Water, Safe Parks bond in November 2002.

Measure DD was billed not only as a way to clean Oakland's waterways but also as a catchall for several community groups pining for city money to save crumbling city assets, such as Studio One in North Oakland, and create more open space in a city that desperately needs it.

Zoo director Joel Parrott said in May it will take at least a year to raise enough money from private donors to be able to build panda living quarters acceptable to the Chinese government and research center.

The zoo has ties with the UC Berkeley and UC Davis, which will help with the proposed 10-year research and breeding project.

Parrott was unavailable for comment Thursday. He joined the zoo in the 1980s, after it was named one of the worst zoos in the country. Under Parrott's leadership, the zoo has been able to renovate its entrance and the homes of the zoo's elephants, tigers, giraffes, camels and squirrel monkeys with the help of $5.19 million from Measure K, which was passed in 1990.

The Children's Zoo, which was crumbling in 2002, is now closed for an $8 million renovation paid for in part by Measure DD and partly through private donations.

When pulling for Measure DD, Parrott said he'd like the zoo to take advantage of its location in the Oakland hills and East Bay Regional Park District and build a 40-acre zoo like the renowned San Diego facility. The Oakland Zoo expansion, he said, would focus mostly on interpretation of California wildlife and include endangered native species.