Seeds of hope grow into a force of nature

A dangling, moon-shaped feeding device for playful cubs to cling to; a geometric structure of interconnected triangles to hold honey; and a pair of nut-filled cylinder tubes wrapped in wool yarn — these are the toys designed for moon bears, named for the crescent-shaped white marking on their chest. In 2011, Li’s design won first prize in a designing-for-moon bear competition, one of the organisers of which is the Beijing branch of Roots and Shoots, a youth-led community action programme launched two decades earlier by the internationally renowned primatologist Jane Goodall. “Many young people who were with us have later gone on to take leadership roles in China’s ongoing effort to balance development with environmental protection,” said Goodall, who visited Beijing from 30 November to 5 December. Goodall with youth participants of the Roots and Shoots programme at Beijing’s Olympic Forest Park in 2010 One team that won a “Persistence Award” on 30 November hails from Qingdao, a coastal city in East China’s Shandong province. A few thousand words later, Goodall readers got an update: “The situation regarding wild pandas has improved to the extent that it is now classified as ‘vulnerable’ rather than ‘endangered’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature,” she wrote.