Pandas, which are basically giant poop machines, may inadvertently help save other species

[Judi Lynn]

Protecting charismatic animals could help less cute creatures.

By Rachel Feltman Yesterday at 1:13pm




Pandas get a lot of attention—and given how hard it is to keep those black and white bundles of fluff from going extinct, it's not surprising that they take up a huge glut of the world's conservation funding. These are animals that literally evolved to be lazy: the only food they eat, bamboo, is incredibly hard for them to digest, so they have to consume about 30 pounds of it a day (around a fifth of that is actually digested) and expend so little energy that they basically live in a state of suspended animation. They also seem to suffer from pretty constant gastrointestinal disorders, and they're notoriously difficult to breed in captivity. Still, we work to save them. In fact, thanks to aggressive conservation efforts from China, the animals moved from "endangered" to "vulnerable" status in 2016.

But when a species is so bad at keeping itself alive that some folks argue we should let it die out, even the animal lovers among us have to ask whether all that effort is really worth it. Why let one animal take up so many resources just because they're cute as heck?
According to a study published this week in Ecosphere, panda haters should probably pick another issue to play devil's advocate on: China's efforts to conserve panda territory have actually protected a bunch of other species, too, including golden monkeys, takins, red pandas, forest musk deer, and Asiatic black bears.

"Pandas are basically a national treasure for China, and they've become kind of the poster child for all conservation efforts," says study co-author Andrés Viña of Michigan State University. "So they receive a lot of the money, they get a lot of the attention. We were interested to see how that might extend to other species."

More:
http://www.popsci.com/panda-conservation-forests?dom=rss-default&src=syn#page-2