Which animal is the symbol of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)?

The giant panda, chosen in 1961 partly for a practical reason - the founders wanted a logo that would reproduce well and cheaply in black and white, and an animal that was already black and white solved it. The particular panda was Chi-Chi, who had arrived at London Zoo the year before and was the only one in the Western world.

It has become the standard example of a flagship species: an appealing animal used to raise money and attention for a habitat that contains a great deal else. Protecting enough bamboo forest for pandas protects golden monkeys, takins and red pandas that nobody would put on a poster.

The argument against it is that charisma decides the budget. Enormous sums go to a handful of large mammals while amphibians - the most threatened class of vertebrates on Earth - and almost all invertebrates get very little, and it is invertebrates that most ecosystems actually run on. The counter is that the money would not otherwise exist at all. The panda itself was moved from endangered to vulnerable in 2016, which is one of the better results conservation has to point at.