The pandas the world forgot

Red pandas are nothing short of adorable. Fuzzy and full of beans, they spend their time rooting around for acorns, chewing on shoots of bamboo and bouncing from tree to tree.

For millennia, they’ve survived by hiding in peace atop Myanmar’s forests, hardly making a rustle, their safety reliant on never being noticed.

Yet some people did notice them, and used that knowledge in the most beautiful of ways.

The indigenous people of Myanmar’s Imawbum Massif have looked after these forests and their furry red residents for generations - protecting the local wildlife with a relentless loyalty.

Despite never receiving the recognition they deserved, they’ve done an exemplary job - standing strong for these pandas in a world that largely didn’t care.

But today they are fighting a rearguard action on so many fronts that they simply can’t do it alone anymore. 

A new wave of human society has arrived, and the forest is being ripped to shreds by logging, crisscrossed by roads and railways, torn up by mining and ravaged by agricultural expansion.

To add to this crisis, the pandas are under attack from hunters who leave infamously brutal traps, which are designed to catch bears but are indiscriminate, snapping shut on a panda’s little limbs to lethal effect.

It’s all happened so fast that red pandas are now officially endangered with a population that’s plummeting.

We have to halt this downward spiral. We must put indigenous people back in control.

Through your donations, we need to support and enable them to protect the mountain forests. We’re contributing our expertise and resources to ensure they will be able to confront the new threats and halt the red panda’s rapid decline.

There is still time to protect these magnetic creatures, and - with your support - we won’t have to witness the needless and avoidable loss of another beautiful species.