Importance of saving the flagship species

BEIJING - The giant panda is not only the flagship species for endangered wildlife among conservation communities, but a wildly adored animal among the public. This is one of the reasons why pandas are so important to us.

By saving pandas, we are also helping preserve the rich biodiversity - plants, the land, other species - all of which are important for pandas to survive.

There are fewer than 1,600 individuals of giant pandas in the wild along a few mountain ranges of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces in China, and more seriously, they are fragmented into more than 18 smaller populations separated from one to another. Nearly 80 percent of the subpopulations consist of only several to dozens of individuals. A few of them are now facing extinction due to a loss in habitat, fragmentation and degradation.