The Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend, Indiana has a red panda cub, its first since 2021, and it is letting the public choose his name. Voting is open through September 17, 2026, and the winner will be announced on September 19, International Red Panda Day.
Three names on the ballot
Zoo staff picked the shortlist: Clifford, Russet, and Pabu, a Tibetan word meaning “son” that colloquially also means puffball. Anyone can take part by donating at least $5 on the zoo’s website. The name that raises the most money wins and becomes the cub’s permanent name.
Every dollar goes to the Red Panda SAFE program, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums framework that channels support to organizations working to protect red pandas and their habitat in the wild. Online donors are also entered into a drawing for a red panda plush and two passes to the zoo.
The cub, and why keepers are raising him
The cub was born June 13, 2026, to mother Raya and father EJ. He has been hand-reared behind the scenes by zoo staff since it became clear his mother would not be able to raise him.
Hand-rearing a red panda is not a shortcut. It means round-the-clock bottle feeds, weight checks and a deliberate effort to keep the cub behaving like a red panda rather than a pet, and it is the reason he is here at all. The photograph of a keeper’s gloved hands steadying a bottle is a fair picture of what the first months of this cub’s life have actually looked like.
Naming campaigns are becoming a reliable way for zoos to turn public affection into conservation money. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo raised $18,000 for grizzly habitat work when the public named its two orphaned cubs Scout and Ranger.
How to vote
Donations run through the end of September 17, 2026, at the Potawatomi Zoo’s red panda page. The announcement lands two days later on International Red Panda Day, which is as good a peg as a naming contest is ever going to get.
Red pandas are endangered, with wild populations concentrated in the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China and falling because of habitat loss and fragmentation. A $5 vote is a small thing, but a naming campaign that funds SAFE work and puts a species in front of a few thousand people who were mostly there to pick a cute name is doing more than one job at once.
