I'm Benji Jones, a senior environmental reporter at VOX sitting in Fushon, Iline.

I write about climate change and the environment, and today I've got some good news.

The panda is no longer endangered.

I'm talking about those black and white bears that live in China and eat bamboo and are

extremely cute.

In 2021, China announced that the bears had been downgraded from endangered to vulnerable,

a less worrisome category after decades of conservation efforts.

This is a big deal.

Pandas are not only cute, but iconic.

They've come to represent threatened wild animals everywhere, which basically means

that the very symbol of endangered species is no longer endangered.

But I also have some less good news.

While everyone was busy saving pandas, the rest of nature kind of fell apart.

Ecosystems like coral reefs and tropical forests are collapsing.

Animals are now going extinct at an unprecedented rate.

It's frankly depressing.

I'm not saying that panda conservation is somehow to blame for the downfall of nature, but

as some experts see it, the model of conservation that's helped pandas hasn't actually worked

to sustain biodiversity at large.

Is there another way that we should be doing conservation?

I mean, what is it exactly that we're trying to save in the first place?

And why?

...