Giant pandas are far from unworth saving, but the giant salamander is much more critical in the wild, largely due to "traditional" Chinese medicine - while both are considered "apex predators" (in an ecological sense - meaning that they have few to no predators) in their ecosystem, the giant panda has the advantage that aside from its urine, it has never been known as a "medicinal" animal. Through all the ancient literature we've found so far, it was never advocated to hunt for any part of its body, for any ailment.

*sigh* So many animals, so endangered, for absolutely no logical reason.

"Useless" is a bit of an arbitrary judgement, especially when it comes to evolution - all "advanced" species have "useless" remnants from their eons of change, as well as having incredibly specialized and well-adapted traits and anatomical features.

The problem with giant pandas, is that they're incredibly specialized, and fill a very specific niche in the environment (mass consumers of bamboo forest) - they're as specialized as the koalas of Australia (consuming Eucalypts) and the sloths of South America, but WAY bigger, and much less inclined to reproduce. Even in the wild, when two compatible individuals run into each other (or find each other) during a female's heat, there have been observed instances where they just chill together for a while, "mate" (without penetration), and go their separate ways - unlike other species where mating is occasionally unsuccessful from the male end, there are rarely more than two attempts to mate by the male, and as such, birth rates in the wild are almost as low as non-IVF reproduction rates in captivity.

For what it's worth, I'm not crazy about spending over a hundred million US dollars (by all countries, mind you, not just the US) preserving a species that cant be bothered to get their shag on every once in a while. Habitat preservation is one thing, the active attempt at restoration of former population levels while the species has no interest in doing the sex thing in the wild is another.

Yes, humans led to their decline in the first place. But by committing ourselves to this cause, we're getting ourselves into a whole incredibly expensive mess regarding a species that's not considered ecologically necessary, in the mountainous bamboo forest habitat, while ignoring some of the less-cute, VERY necessary organisms that we're causing the extinction of just as quickly, like the frogs of Central America and many of the accidentally-caught fish and crustaceans of the ocean.