Why is the disappearance of the panda a danger for us?

Let us take a Western man, thirty years old, father of a family, residing in a large European metropolis. Saving the pandas, he wants to, but he still wonders what good it does to him these big lazy creatures that live thousands of miles away. If pandas, koalas or polar bears were to disappear from the face of the earth, it would be a little painful for him because they are cute, but it wouldn't change his daily life. What if he's wrong?

At the table thanks to sea otters
Like everyone else, our budding green hero eats three times a day. He likes fish and for his cod and sorrel steak, it's not just the fishermen (or his favourite frozen food brand) he has to say thank you. All the species that inhabit the seas are a link in the chain that allows the species we eat to survive. Ecologist Robert Barbault, in the book Biodiversity, our future is in the cabbage (ed.Terre sauvage/Nature et découvertes) explains that "we must not reason by isolating one species from others".

And to give as an example the Alaskan sea otter, whose influence on our lives could be doubted: it became the prey of killer whales when they no longer found seals to eat, the latter having been deprived of their favourite fish by overfishing, the otter saw its population melt as ice floes under global warming. The problem is that otters ate sea urchins, which then began to proliferate, invading the coastal seaweed carpet and depriving fish and shellfish of their habitat and food. And more fish means more cod steak with sorrel for dinner.

"Unpredictable cascading repercussions"
"As soon as you touch something, you cause cascading repercussions that are unpredictable and difficult to control," says Robert Barbault. That is why specialists all agree that preserving entire ecosystems is more important than preserving a particular species. Thus, the disappearance of the giant panda in the Chinese forest would not be dramatic in itself for our Western sceptic, but it would be due to ecological disturbances that would have serious long-term repercussions: deforestation, climate change, impoverishment of plant species...

Not to mention that if the panda were to disappear, there are great risks that other species around it would disappear. Our beloved panda thus plays the role of an "umbrella species": it attracts attention, if possible the funds for its protection, and its protection makes it possible to protect a multitude of other less media-friendly species. "We better protect what we love," says Delphine Delord, communications director at the Beauval Zoo-Park (Loir-et-Cher), which last year hosted two Chinese pandas. By protecting an animal's living space, we also protect other less loved animals. Unloved, but just as useful: pollinating insects to produce vegetables, filter bacteria to get drinking water, plant molecules to make medicines....

Eating, drinking, taking care of yourself, that's what it means to our now convinced eco-lover. "We are late in realizing our deep links with the living tissue," says Robert Barbault. We are intimately part of it and, when we touch it, we move the whole thing. Once one of the stitches has been defeated, it is difficult to repair the fabric: all that remains is to wait and observe how things will rebalance themselves over time. But do we really have time to wait?"