Ph2005123001531 From The Washington Post:

Before there could be a Tai Shan, there was Day Mount, crouching among the bamboo, bringing giant pandas into a waiting Western world.

Mount was the State Department’s first panda officer. Chosen to escort Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling from Beijing to Washington in 1972, he was first in a line of diplomats who over three decades have helped ensure the panda program’s success.

Unsung and less photogenic, they are America’s boots in the bamboo, choreographing meetings between Chinese ministries and Western zoos, vetting panda loans, trucking up mountainsides with U.S. money for panda conservation.