Page 23 - World of Animals - Issue #29

Why save the panda?

into captive breeding situations until we could resolve
what the problem was. They finally worked out it was the
impact of an invasive fungus, called chytrid fungi, resulting
in a disease called chytridiomycosis. It’s a massive disease
epidemic driving lots of frog species towards extinction
very rapidly. We have already lost several iconic species.
Yet it’s not just well-known species at risk; it’s lots of
species, which is why we run other fundraising campaigns.
We linked our bumblebee campaign to food security
because they play a vital role in pollinating crops. People
could buy into that and understand the importance of
conserving bumblebees. It’s going to be a bigger challenge
for us when we want to look at snakes or spiders, or things
people don’t really like much. However, it can be amazing
how quickly people’s perceptions can change – marketing
is key. You’re competing with campaigns for all iconic
species but it’s how you use and link those two things
together. You need to get the balance right.

BugLife
Paul Hetherington
Director of Fundraising and Communications
BugLife are the only organisation in
Europe dedicated to conserving and
protecting all invertebrate species
The iconic species are cute, but they won’t
ABOVE
Although they are still survive unless we protect smaller creatures
endangered, panda numbers
have grown by 17 per cent in Invertebrates are difficult to fundraise for because people
the last decade don’t see them as cute and cuddly. People tend to take
them for granted and don’t realise how important they are
to life as we know it. There is probably some awareness
BELOW IUCN now for how important pollination is to our continued
Pandas are excellent existence. As a result, public awareness about bees is
tree climbers; cubs Craig Hilton-Taylor
master the skill by the Head of the IUCN Red List very positive; however if you actually show most people
age of six months a picture of a bee, with the exception of the bumblebee,
The IUCN Red List is the world’s largest they will call it a wasp or a hornet. Instead of relying on
database of the conservation status of
animals. It aims to assess 150,000 species by 2020 images, we have to talk up contributions that invertebrates
like earthworms and dung beetles make to the planet.
Pandas have been expensive to protect, but it We’ve now got a costing on the dung beetle, which is
may be a conservation success story just shy of £300 million per annum to the British farming
economy. They have a real monetary value.
Whether the money spent on tigers, elephants and Lions and rhinos are big and they’re very photogenic,
pandas would be better spent across all biodiversity, is but you can’t save them if you don’t save the smaller
hard to say. In many ways spending huge amounts of creatures. Without them, lions and rhinos wouldn’t be
money on elephants and pandas can be a huge benefit to able to exist because their food would disappear. That’s
conservation because those are iconic species; it helps to the difficult thing that you have to try and get across to
really get the conservation message home. Many flagship funders. If you want to do a promotion, you’d probably
species, such as the African elephant, have wide-ranging much rather put a cuddly orangutan on it than some sort
habitats, so by conserving them you are conserving really of weird spider wouldn’t you? Having said that, raising
large ecosystems and all the species that live there. money for the iconic species can be helpful if it leads to
The panda is more restrictive and it’s tricky to say that preservation of large areas, because it is likely to benefit all
the investment has been worthwhile. But pandas appear of the plants and animals that live there. Yet sometimes it
to be recovering and we’re hoping in the next year or two can have a negative impact because they create a brand
we can down-list it and say all that effort has paid off. new reserve when an area is under threat and in doing so
All of the money was going into ex-situ breeding. they destroy other habitats.
Achieving that breakthrough has been hugely successful One problem is with the Iberian lynx, which is quite
and the lessons learned from that process can be applied endangered. Some great work is going on to try and
to other species. The husbandry side of it is often ignored. preserve it, but all the captive bred lynx that are released
Huge investment went into breeding and raising young into the wild have been flea-treated with different worming
panda cubs to adulthood. Valuable lessons have been tablets. So even more endangered than the lynx are the
learned that can be transferred to other species, which parasitic invertebrates that live only on the lynx and they
have similar problems. It’s often hard to measure all the are facing extinction far faster. Why should we care?
benefits that go into these things. From a selfish perspective, we don’t know how that one
On the whole, the vertebrates tend not to be too little creature may benefit us in the future. An awful lot
bad. The most threatened are the amphibians; about 41 of things in medicine have come from invertebrates,
per cent are threatened with extinction. Until a global such as hypodermic needles from looking at mosquitoes,
assessment was published in 2004, we had no idea what and more recently the sting of a wasp in Brazil has been
was happening. There was a massive campaign launched investigated as a possible cure for cancer. There is so
worldwide with zoos, to try and get vulnerable amphibians much we have discovered and so much yet to discover.

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