It is a minor point But I would like to pushback on some misconceptions involving “panda conservation”, mostly by paraphrasing the relevant chapter from Lucy Cookes The Truth About Animals.
Contrary to headlines about libidoless pandas driving themselves extinct, the main reason pandas are going extinct is the main reason animal species in general are going extinct, habitat loss as humans take and fracture There land.
Giant Pandas almost entirely rely on bamboo for food , bamboo engages in synchronous flowering with the other bamboo plants in the area and then Seeds and dies off, because of this it is important that the pandas have a wide range of space they can travel across not only to mate with other pandas, but to access new bamboo forests when The ones they live in die.
These forests even in “ protected” areas, are threatened by mining, roads, and agriculture.
Meanwhile , giant pandas become an international symbol of China, China sends pandas to its allies as gifts, or loans them to foreign zoos at a million dollars per year( these rules also applying to any offspring born in the foreign countries), and panda cubs draw in domestic tourism, and large numbers are bred of an animal that doesn’t breed well in captivity, to release 10 socially maladjusted giant pandas 8 of which don’t survive.
Pandas aren’t hogging conservation dollars because
1)the money isn’t /conservation money/ that would go to other species, It’s politics and business
2)The benefits that would protect wild pandas, ( protecting large intact tracts of land) would also help a wide array of wildlife, this is a general trend of megafauna, they need more space and are disproportionately impacted by habitat loss, which is the leading cause of species extinction, and they are charismatic, functioning as umbrella species that protect whole ecosystems.
3) The most effective ways to save panda populations aren’t being acted upon in the first place
Side-note: I do think pandas are an obvious place to start when it comes to genetically modifying wildlife, considering they are a Charismatic Megafaunal Herbivore, that normally has twins , but always abandons one offspring in the wild( because bamboo is too low calorie compared to what it’s omnivore ancestors ate to feed both twins) modifying them to only produce one offspring at a time feels like a no-brainer assuming we can get There numbers up still.
My main worry is that efforts to popularize traditional Asian food will backfire, due to the use of fish sauce in many recipes, Peruvian anchovetas are the most heavily exploited vertebrate, and due to the high number of deaths needed per unit of food compared to other animals, a slight increase in anchovy consumption could easily outweigh any gains in cattle/pig/chicken etc. welfare. (though use of fishmeal as animal feed for chickens/pigs complicates this)
https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/n9tsnx/soybeans_are_grown_for_their_oil_we_only_feed_it/ any thing that increases soybean meal consumption (over other plant based foods) may be better then other foods because they would slightly raise the price of soybean meal for livestock owners (though this may just lead to the same number of animals being fed worse nutrition?) , conversely soybean oil, a byproduct of soybean meal, would ideally be avoided to avoid subsidizing animal feed
https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/when-it-comes-to-the-environment-conservatives-dont-like-conserving/ We know that American moderates and Conservatives are actively turned away by eco-conscious messaging, and will pay more for less environmentally friendly methods. Combine this with strange ideas of less resource demanding lifestyles as dictatorial conspiracies for control by a liberal elite in some sci-fi dystopia ” I will not live in a pod/ I will not eat the bugs/ soylent green is people ” , anti-PRC sentiment, Ideas about east-Asians people being more feminine/collectivist/passive then white-Americans, The estrogen myth, and the Idea that caring about others (and therefore eating plants) is unmasculine, any Organized effort to get Americans to eat more tofu will have to be done very carefully to avoid massive backfire.