It is widely understood that lions, pandas and polar bears are all in serious jeopardy … The fact that bassoons now share this endangered status may come as more of a surprise, but this summer the reed instrument has become a strong candidate for international protection, according to fans of the sound of the symphony orchestra.

A campaign called Save the Bassoon now aims to remind the public of the importance of this engaging member of the woodwind section and to encourage young musicians to take it up. Using the “endangered species” model employed by the World Wide Fund for Nature, campaigners are highlighting the scarcity of bassoonists and paving the way for the promotion of some other orchestral instruments that are under threat, such as the oboe, French horn, viola, trombone and double bass.

The bassoon preservation campaign began in Amsterdam in June and is to spread across Europe through a network of professional players. At the head of the initiative is Bram van Sambeek, a virtuoso bassoonist who has often played with the London Symphony Orchestra.

“The name of the campaign is deliberately quite dramatic because we want people to think about whether the bassoonist could be as endangered as the panda. There is a danger. And there is a danger to the future of the orchestra as a result,” said van Sambeek, who lives in the Hague and will bring his rock version of Vivaldi’s bassoon music to London next year.

“At the moment, only about 1% of people on the street can even recognise this instrument,” he said. “I am always prepared for the fact that people won’t know what it is.”

Save the Bassoon began as part of the Holland festival, an annual arts event in Amsterdam run by British artistic director Ruth Mackenzie. This year she commissioned seven short works to celebrate the instrument, and Van Sambeek is to push forward with the campaign next week when he appears at Berlin’s Konzerthaus alongside an equally endangered double bass player.

“We have big plans for bassoon events of the kind that cannot necessarily be performed in a normal concert hall. I expect to have news soon of how we will link up with musicians and orchestras in other countries. The most important thing is to have more international events under the label of Save the Bassoon.”

For Sir Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican Centre in London and a former bassoon player, the trick is to promote British youth orchestras. “Music’s place in young people’s lives has never been greater,” he said this weekend. “They are fantastic creators and consumers, but the supportive structures need to be there for those who want to take up more unusual instruments. An increase in Saturday morning orchestra groups would be a great start, I think; then there is no need to worry about school curriculums.”

As a child Kenyon played the cello in a youth orchestra but when a spare bassoon became available, “being an individualist”, he opted to become one of just two bassoonists in the orchestra, rather than one of six cellists.

“I absolutely loved playing it. It has a rich and varied sound and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be neglected,” he said. “The bassoon used to be characterised as the joker of the orchestra but its beauty is evident in the opening solo of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.”

Schemes such as the 25-year-old LSO Discovery project, which is run with the Barbican and reaches out to children in the London area, are doing crucial work, and, Kenyon said, when Sir Simon Rattle returns from Berlin to lead the London Symphony Orchestra in 2017, this educational mission will be a priority. Meanwhile, In Harmony, an English music programme founded by cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and based on Venezuela’s acclaimed El Sistema music teaching scheme, runs events across the country. North of the border, Big Noise, Sistema Scotland, does similar work and is championed by Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti.

Van Sambeek can credit his mother for his discovery of the bassoon. “I had a smart mother and she realised I wanted to play the saxophone because it looks sexy,” he said. “I was collecting golden shiny instruments at the time.” So she took her son to listen behind the door at the local music school and asked him to choose an instrument solely on its sound.

“It was very clear the bassoon was the most appealing. The sax I didn’t even recognise, but thought was horrible.” He defines the bassoon as a modest instrument that you cannot always hear clearly in the orchestra. “It cannot be picked out. It completely disappears and it also attracts modest personalities too, although I would be the exception.”

Those who learn to play the bassoon vouch for its positive impact on their lives. Jennifer Webb, 27, learned as a child in Leeds in 2004 as part of the city council’s Bass Line Project, aimed at giving access to disadvantaged children. “The whole remit was to promote instruments that were less popular,” said Webb. “I came from a single-parent family on a council estate and the bassoon and the lessons were free. Although I am not a professional musician, I still play a lot and I know others from that scheme have gone on to the Royal Northern College of Music, the Birmingham Conservatoire or the Guildhall in London.”

Webb teaches English in Leeds now but still plays both the bassoon and the cello. “I find a lot of the children I teach don’t even recognise the cello. To be honest, it would be hard enough for most of them to get their hands on a violin, let alone a bassoon.”