It is World Animal Day, and Extinction is Looming

Today is World Animal Day, and the state of animals on our planet is not good. Only 7,000 cheetahs are left in the wild. There is only ONE male Northern White Rhino left on our planet. He is being guarded with armed guards. along with the two female Northern White Rhinos. The species depends upon his ability to mate with the females. Their horns have been removed so there is no point for poachers to kill them. Scientists say we are entering the sixth mass extinction of earth, but it is not a “natural” extinction event, it is caused by humans. What is really at stake here is the survival of humans on earth.

I do not understand why our species is so cruel to every other species! There is evidence now that the Black Rhino is “officially” extinct in the wild. Humans seem to think we are special, somehow “above” the other life on our planet. If things continue the way they are going, in the next 50 years we will have no reefs, no apex predators in the ocean so very few fish, no rhinos, no sharks, and water rising everywhere. At that point will we wise up? I hope we wise up much sooner than that. Conservation means saving our own species…once we ruin all of the ecosystems that support life on this planet, we won’t last long, either. Today’s photographs are of animals headed toward extinction. Let’s not let it happen. Everyone….listen to Jane Goodall:

“If all of us would go through our lives thinking about the little choices we make each day as to what we buy, what we eat, what we wear – and how those choices might impact the environment, might impact child slave labor in other countries, might impact cruelty towards animals, we start making small changes… Billions of small changes around the world can lead to the kind of change we need if we care about future generations.” – Jane Goodall (http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/jane-goodall/photos/jane-goodall-birthday/)

Please. Start small, but start!

We need to wake up to the danger we are in by putting these animals at risk, by stressing the planet and causing it to warm, to plastic trash everywhere….to cutting down rainforests, etc etc. Or we are lost.