World Wildlife Day: March 3

World Wildlife Day (WWD) is our chance to honor the various magnificent forms of wild flora and fauna. While also, reminding us of the urgent need to step up the fight against wildlife crime and human-induced reduction of species, which have wide-ranging economic, environmental and social impacts.  

This is important not only because of our inherent need to be around nature.  It is also important to the existence of humanity overall.  Edward O. Wilson (1984) equated the effects of human urban sprawl to the following:

“This simple fact of nature bears heavily on the design of nature reserves. When a piece of primeval forest is set aside and the surrounding forest [is] cleared, it becomes an island in an agricultural sea.  Like wave-lapped Puerto Rico or Bali, it has lost most of its connections with other natural land habitats from which new immigrations can occur.  Over a period of years, the number of plant and animal species will fall to a new and predictable level.  Some impoverishment of diversity is inevitable even if men never put an ax to a single tree in the reserve. This natural decline presents biologists with a problem that is technically difficult and soluble only through the chancing of risky compromises.  The reserve they recommend must be small enough to be economically reasonable. They cannot ask that an entire country be set aside. But they have the obligation to insist that the patch be made large enough to sustain the fauna and flora. It is their job to prove that a certain minimum area is required, to list as completely as possible which  species will be saved in the reserve and for approximately how long” (p. 24-25).  

As we stand now, the rate at which the human race is consuming the Earth’s resources we are heading towards what scientists refer to as the sixth mass extinction, with the fifth mass extinction being the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.  It is believed that this mass extinction will be caused by the loss of biodiversity in our ecosystems.  The loss of essential organisms, plant and animal life that is essential in our species survival. This loss is attributed to several factors: habitat destruction, overexploitation, agricultural intensification, climate change, pollution, and invasive species. By reintroducing nature to our built environments, we can help to combat this loss of biodiversity and reintroduce the flora and fauna that is becoming endangered of extinction to the urban environment creating an environment in which we can coexist.