By Julia Strimer
On April 22, the world will celebrate Earth Day, which marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.
Earth Day Network (EDN) is the organization that leads Earth Day events worldwide in over 193 countries. This year, the group has launched its “Protect Our Species” as the theme of the 2019 campaign.
We’re sharing our planet with 8.7 million species. That’s 6.5 million species on land and 2.2 million in our oceans.
But today, up to half of all species are threatened by causes driven by human activity: climate change, deforestation, habitat loss, trafficking and poaching, unsustainable agriculture, plastic pollution, and pesticides to name a few.
- Land-dwelling species have declined by 40 percent since 1970, the first Earth Day.
- Marine animal populations have fallen by 40 percent.
- Birds populations are down 25 percent.
- Freshwater animals have plummeted 75 percent since 1970.
- Fifty percent of the world’s coral reefs have died in the last 30 years.
So how can we help our fellow species?
Here are some suggestions:
1) Join an organization. National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) are two working for other species.
2) Educate yourself and others. Research an endangered species and share what you’ve learned with family and friends.
We need to remember that we share this planet with our fellow creatures. As Henry Beston says in The Outermost House, “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.”
