It is World Environment Day. Started in 1974, this day was setup by the United Nations Environment Programme to raise awareness and drive environmental action on a global scale. 5 June 2021 is all about Reimagine, Recreate, Restore…. with the hashtag #generationrestoration. Read more about this year’s campaign here and how you can get involved.
As usual with these blog posts, what follows is a curation of online resources to explore. In honour of World Environment Day, I have chosen to focus on Wildlife Conservation – a topic very dear to my heart.
Wildlife conservation is the practice of protecting plant and animal species and their habitats. As part of the world’s ecosystems, wildlife provides balance and stability to nature’s processes. The goal of wildlife conservation is to ensure the survival of these species, and to educate people on living sustainably with other species.
National Geographic
To understand the significance of the phrase “wildlife provides balance and stability to nature’s processess“, you will need to understand what biodiversity and ecosystem services are. I have blogged about these concepts previously. You can read about it here.
There are a number of ways to assess the state of the environment, wild places and wild populations. Here are some resouces to help give a feel for the state of things in the natural world at present:
Much of the above paints a rather bleak picture. However, each of these assessments work hand in hand with organisations taking action for wildlife conservation. This conservation work occurs at different scales. Generally non-government and non-profit conservation is conducted by passionate research ecologists, zoologists and environmentalists forming boots-on-the-ground conservation collectives. These conservation collectives have incredible impact at local and community scale. They rely heavily on marketing and effective communication to create awareness to generate funding from donors and sponsors. I will share a story of just such a conservation collective in a future post.
For now let’s focus on wildlife conservation action on a regional and global scale. Umbrella organisations such as WWF, Wildlife Conservation Society and Conservation International provide essential links and collaboration opportunities for smaller scale conservation collectives. This allows for conservation action to be placed in a wider framework that aims to transcend political borders and bureaucracy. The next set of resources are some interesting developments in wildlife conservation that I am following closely:
So what can we do as individuals for wildlife conservation? There are many options. Awareness and support of these organisations is an obvious answer. But where donations and financial support are not possible, choosing the sustainable options in our lives daily and mindfully has huge impact too. I always go back to the UN SDGs for help. There are targets here at all scales. Wildlife conservation falls under Goal 15: Life on Land. #togetherforthegoals #generationrestoration