A parade of pandas aims to raise awareness in Thailand

A parade of 1,600 papier-mache pandas will be touring Bangkok this month as part of a worldwide campaign for the conservation of the endangered species.

Campaigning in a country that has no wild pandas at all may sound odd, but the message from World Wide Fund for Nature Thailand goes beyond just those cuddly creatures. Thailand is home to a vast population of wild animals, including Asian elephants and Bengal tigers. The panda campaign intends to raise awareness for the conservation of these species, too. At the end of the exhibition, all the pandas will be offered for “adoption” for 600 baht ($16.8) and the proceeds donated to WWF Thailand.

The pandas, created with recycled materials by French artist Paulo Grangeon, represent the 1,600 or so that were left in the wild when the campaign was first launched in France in 2008. Since then, the art project has traveled to around 100 locations around the world and the number of wild pandas has increased to 1,864, according to the WWF.

In the Thailand tour, the pandas will appear, flash-mob style, at 10 landmarks in Bangkok and the ancient city of Ayutthaya. They will be on exhibit for just three hours at each spot sometime between March 3 and 16.

After that, the pandas will be on exhibition through April 10 at Central Embassy, an upscale shopping mall in Bangkok that belongs to retail giant Central Group.

It is hoped that the pandas will also draw visitors to the mall, which opened just before the military staged a coup in May 2014. The country’s economy and consumer confidence have been sluggish since.

“Pandas are cute, and the campaign will attract everyone from young children to families and tourists,” Barom Bhicharnchitr, managing director of the mall, said.