A few years ago, I met a conservation student named Stewart who explained, at some length, why we should stop trying to save the giant panda. It wasn’t that he didn’t like pandas, he said, simply that too much money and effort had been spent on what was probably a lost cause, just because a conservation body had adopted the poor beast as its logo. I must confess that at first I was taken aback, but I also had to concede that pandas do themselves no favours when it comes to conservation (rarely has an animal seemed so reluctant to engage in sex), and, given the paucity of funding for other projects, it seems important to use what money there is wisely.
A few months later, quite coincidentally, I went to the opening of an exhibition where a display echoed Stewart’s argument, if more cautiously and rationally. Why do we spend so much on pandas, when the same sums could be much more effectively deployed elsewhere? What other, equally important species could have been saved from extinction at a fragment of the cost of the panda programme? The figures were compelling – and I cannot deny that, for a long time, I was persuaded.
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