WWF's panda logo was modelled on Chi Chi, a lone panda in London
In 1961 the new World Wildlife Fund needed a symbol that crossed language barriers and printed well in black and white. The answer was Chi Chi, a giant panda moved from Beijing Zoo to London Zoo in 1958 and at the time the only panda living in the West. Sir Peter Scott drew the logo.
The fund grew out of a letter. Victor Stolan, responding to articles by Sir Julian Huxley in The Observer, proposed a fund for endangered animals, and Huxley connected him with Max Nicholson, who had spent decades bridging progressive thinkers and big business and who came up with the name. WWF was conceived on 29 April 1961, opening its first office that September inside the headquarters of the International Union for Conservation of Nature at Morges, Switzerland. Its job at first was simply to raise money for existing groups; its founding manifesto asked for cash to buy threatened land, pay wardens and run a war room tracking danger spots.
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands became its first president. Remarkably early, in 1963, a WWF conference and report cautioned that people were heating the planet, drawing on scientists including Charles Keeling. In 1970 Bernhard and Prince Philip set up an endowment called The 1001, whose members each gave $10,000; Bernhard later resigned over the Lockheed bribery scandals.
The organisation widened from saving species to biodiversity, pollution and climate, and began running projects of its own. In 1986 it renamed itself the World Wide Fund for Nature while keeping the initials, though the United States and Canada kept the old name. That year, to mark its 25th anniversary, Prince Philip gathered Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish leaders at Assisi to set out their faiths' relationship with nature. WWF researchers also mapped 238 ecoregions of outstanding biological value.
Now the world's largest conservation organisation, it has more than 5 million supporters and works in over 100 countries. It runs Earth Hour and publishes the Living Planet Report every two years. It has also drawn criticism for its corporate ties and for backing conservation measures that led to violent conflict with local people.
Source: World Wildlife Fund
