SOUTHERN WINDS

Why Aren’t You Trying To Save Pandas? Rethinking the Faces of Conservation

Why conservation needs more than just cute mascots to make a real impact

Image created by the author with CANVA

I was knee-deep in a project trying to protect river ecosystems teeming with overlooked, uncharismatic species — tiny fish, aquatic insects, swampy plants most people wouldn’t glance at. But this question caught me off guard: Why aren’t you working to save Pandas?

I didn’t know how to answer at first. Not because I didn’t care about pandas, but because the question itself revealed how narrow our conservation spotlight can be.

We tend to put animals like pandas, tigers, and polar bears on a pedestal. They’re cute, they’re famous, and they’ve got the kind of charisma that melts hearts… and opens wallets. But what about the last living individual of a tortoise species, or a fleeting natural event like a mayfly emergence that turns a river into a cloud of shimmering wings?

These are powerful symbols, too. They just haven’t been marketed that way.

published in makes a case for exactly this kind of shift. Led by Dr. Ivan Jarić and a team of international researchers, the paper introduces the concept of the “flagship…