Happy Earth Day (a few days late)

There were a lot of great nature/wildlife shows on this weekend in celebration of Earth Day. I learned a lot of things. Something that struck me and stayed with me all weekend is this:

We are in a time called the 6th mass extinction. 2 out of every 5 animals on planet Earth are in danger of become extinct. ALL CAUSED BY MAN. This is unprecedented. Once a species is extinct, that is it. We can't get them back.

This is scary to me. I don't want to live in a world with no wolves or polar bears or pandas. And if we get rid of all the wildlife on this planet, what makes people think that we will survive? For instance, if we lose the bees (and we are losing them), we lose a huge group of pollinators that pollinate our crops. What are we going to eat if there is nothing to pollinate the crops?

It is hard to tell, but from what I could research the rarest animal on the planet is the Javan Rhino of Indonesia. There are 60 left in the world. 60 That's it.

And it isn't just foreign places that animals are disappearing. Here in North America, there are only 520 black footed ferrets left. And I don’t mean in one city or state. I mean the whole of North America! That is fewer than the number of people who go to Triangle Town Center Mall on a Saturday. There used to be 500,000 of them at one time. Luckily there are groups that are working to bring them back. But everyone has to get involved to turn what we have done to the Earth around. We humans have to do something and do something NOW! We can't wait, or for species like the Black-Footed Ferret and Javan Rhino it will be too late.

There are a lot of websites that offer information on what you can do. Visit:

http://www.worldwildlife.org/
http://www.defenders.org/
http://www.nwf.org/