“The Bambi Effect”

Coined after Disney’s 1942 movie, Bambi, “The Bambi effect” is used to refer to how humans seem to have a stronger opposition to killing animals that are considered “cute”, wanting to “protect them at all costs, even to the detriment of the wider ecosystem during times such as overpopulation” (Grieze, 2018). With the ecosystem level implications of overprotecting charismatic fauna together with neglecting the rest of the unattractive components of the ecosystem, “The Bambi Effect” can potentially lead to much unintended damage to the stability of ecosystems.

According to Simberloff (1998), the overregulation of a particular species, for instance, through transplanting or supplemental feeding, is contradictory to the protection of entire ecosystems, since all other components of the community are not protected or regulated as intensively. This favouritism towards the charismatic species and inequity in treatment can lead to a situation where “biodiversity conservation becomes solely animal protection, which would no longer be ecology” (Ang & Png, 2020).

“Even if we stretch the survival of charismatic threatened species, in the long run, neglecting the other less appealing wildlife and habitats they depend on will not guarantee their safety from extinction.”

— Ang & Png (2020)

“The Bambi Effect” effectively allows for the romanticisation of single-species conservation and refusal to acknowledge the more complex and intricate aspects of conservation, involving whole ecosystems and every component of the community.

An interesting finding relating to this issue is the fact that panda conservation may not be beneficial to the rest of the ecosystem, contradicting the idea of pandas as an umbrella species.

In a recently published study by Li, et. al. (2020), it was discovered that since the 1960s, ranges of large carnivores such as the leopard, snow leopard, wolf and dhole have retreated significantly in giant panda protected areas, even to the extent of functional extinction within these areas for the dhole. 

This suggests that focusing conservation efforts heavily on charismatic fauna is insufficient and may not be beneficial for the entirety of the ecosystem, due to the highly complex nature of these systems. 

“These findings shake the foundations of one of conservation’s most enduring ideas – that investing time and money into protecting particular large, influential species can pay dividends for the other species and habitats they coexist with. In the aftermath of that revelation, what do we really know about how to protect ecosystems and save wildlife from extinction?”

— Jason Gilchrist