Giant pandas are protected as global ‘natural heritage’ and as China’s ‘national treasure.’ Christof Lammer shows how, behind the spotlight on panda diplomacy, cultural ideas about kinship – and the genealogical, genetic, and behavioural measurements built on them – redirect species conservation.
A recently published journal article and a working paper by Christof Lammer (Department of Society, Knowledge and Politics) examine how conservation scientists decide which pandas should breed; how a matchmaking algorithm based on genealogical calculations and genetic measurements draws criticism for resulting in ‘unsatisfying arranged marriages’, and how some researchers try to recognise panda agency, thereby granting animals more say in their own species’ protection. Yet these attempts reconfigure human–panda relations in unforeseen ways.
Instead of imposing human measurements of kinship on protected animals, several researchers study whether pandas themselves can recognise kin. While such efforts decentre the human, Lammer shows they also, inadvertently, reinforce human preoccupations with kinship – especially cultural imaginaries about heterosexuality, care, and incest – and rely on the very measurement practices that dominate panda conservation.
While kin recognition studies may promote panda‑led mating ex situ, they can tighten human control elsewhere, for example, by discouraging foster mothering or regulating which cubs share enclosures, both grounded in human measurements of panda kinship.
In contrast to sweeping blueprints for revolutionising conservation by decentring the human via market-oriented ‘new conservation,’ wilderness‑first neoprotectionism, or posthumanist ethics, Lammer argues for a modest, seemingly paradoxical move: moving beyond anthropocentrism also requires recentring the human, not to reassert control, but to make human knowledge practices visible and accountable. Humans remain implicated even in the very act of stepping aside in conservation. Understanding how human ways of knowing nonhuman agency produce specific effects in multispecies relations is therefore essential.
 
Lammer, Christof. 2025. Can Pandas Measure Kinship to Conserve the Species? Implications of Knowing More-Than-Human Heritage Making. tbc. working through heritage concepts 4. https://doi.org/10.18452/34379.
Lammer, Christof 2026. When Scientists Study Panda Kin Recognition: Decentring and Recentring the Human in Conserving China’s National Treasure. International Journal of Heritage Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2026.2655940.
 
These open-access publications emerged from Christof Lammer’s research project “Panda Heritage: Kinship Measurements and Life’s Value in Species Conservation” during a fellowship at the Centre for Advanced Studies | Käte Hamburger Kolleg inherit at Humboldt University of Berlin (2024–2025).
Der Beitrag New Publications: What If Pandas Can Recognise Kin? Implications for Conservation erschien zuerst auf University of Klagenfurt.