The 12th annual Endangered Species Day is just around the corner, but you still have time to make your plans. Endangered Species Day is a celebration of past and current conservation success stories and a day of action to keep working to bring species back before they are on the brink of extinction.
Find an Endangered Species Day event on our list of events around the country.
If there is nothing happening near you, make your own Endangered Species Day event! Some ideas are below.
1: Plant milkweed to save monarchs
Monarch butterflies are disappearing before our eyes. They have declined by nearly 70 percent over just 22 years. One of the primary causes of this decline is the loss of milkweed due to increased herbicide use. Monarchs depend on milkweed throughout their lifecycle and you can help bring them back by putting milkweed in the ground. You can buy seeds at Monarch Watch or build milkweed seed bombs. You can buy the kit to build seed bombs at seed-balls.com and use the code Milkweed for a 25% discount.
2: Pick up litter and other debris.
The simple act of picking up trash can have an enormous impact. Common items like straws and plastic shopping bags can cause havoc with marine and other species. While efforts to phase these products out is happening around the world, we can be change makers in our communities by picking them up before they enter waterways. You can identify and map debris you pick up by going to litterati.org.
3: Visit your local U.S. wildlife refuge or national park.
These places are what we all fight for. Wild species need wild places. Going for a hike, taking photos, or birdwatching are all ways you can maintain your connection to these places and take that connection home and turn it into action. You can find a refuge near you at FWS.gov and your nearest national park at the National Park Service’s Find a Park page.
4: Read a book or watch a movie
If weather or other considerations lead you to stay indoors, you can expand your horizons through print or screen. We’ve compiled some possible books and highly recommend the movies DamNation and Racing Extinction.
5: Be social!
Join the conversation online. Tweet or instagram using #EndangeredSpeciesDay. Tweet, post to Facebook or send an e-card or email to your friends to spread the word about Endangered Species Day. We have sample tweets and graphics you can share or a list of 10 easy things you can do to save endangered species that you could share too.
6: Be a responsible consumer
You can support conservation and grassroots organizing to protect endangered species by making a purchase at WeShop.org. 60% of the profits of sales through WeShop go to the Endangered Species Coalition to help us continue organizing Endangered Species Day and other events and actions to protect imperiled species and the Endangered Species Act.
7: Take action
This congress and administration are advancing policies and legislation that threaten the Endangered Species Act. You can sign a pledge to defend the Act here or call your senators and representative and tell them you expect them to defend the Act.
14 comments on “Plan your Endangered Species Day Action or Celebration”
Please protect our endangered species. They do not deserve to be shot, trapped, or poisened all cruel needless tortuous deaths. They are part of our heritage.
Wolves and Grizzly Bears are the most persecute animals on the planet we need to do every thing we can to protect and save these great animals.
We should do everything possible to protect our wildlife and environment from those willing to destroy it. Every peaceful means possible. Remember we are part of the “web of life”.
Be sure to encourage people to plant the CORRECT Milkweed for their area; in our nurseries, everyone sells the Mexican Milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, but it is not a healthy choice for California gardens (I can’t remember the reason, but it’s on the Xerces Society website). We have 4 or 5 sp. native to Calif. In my garden they prefer the A. fasicularis, which is easier to grow than the others (A. speciosa, A. eriocarpa, A. cordifolia). Thank you for upgrading your info.
Prairie Moon nursery has seeds of the midwestern Milkweeds, which also do well in Calif. but I have not seen them utilized by Monarchs. They are definitely much less abundant than 10 years ago.
“Whatever happens to the beasts soon happens to man. All things are connected”
7 Generations Eclipse Map — Endangered Species is one of the community action topics being developed on the map link below. “The Total Eclipse of the Sun is a once in a lifetime opportunity to stimulate Americans to come together in their communities and learn about science and the workings of the universe.”
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_HwGgiyKc4E0PDw-Rtmz1aabpH4&usp=sharing
Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue & Rehabilitation Center, Surf City, Topsail Island, North Carolina. We are on this and no one can stop our momentum. No matter how cruel, ideologically controlled or just plain not bright some persons are.
take a look at why endangered species is so important—what has happened in the past 50 years and with no longer here- animals
Take care and God Bless All . . .
Please protect our endangered species. They do not deserve to be shot, trapped, or poisoned –
all cruel needless tortuous deaths. They are part of our heritage.
We need to protect our endangered species. It will be harder now, in light of the climate change deniers who occupy the White House and his cabinet, but we must do everything we can to protect animals.
Let’s ALL work together to protect ALL endangered species so our children and grandchildren are able to know and enjoy them ALL!!!!
Man is mostly the reason we have endangered species and man should be the one to fix the problem. There is so much we could do as individuals:
* Don’t own multiple homes and keep the home you live in small.
* Have fewer human babies so animal babies can have a future, too.
* Don’t litter, and if you see litter, be the bigger person and pick it up.
* Eat as little meat as possible and when you do eat it, make sure it wasn’t factory farmed and was humanely raised.
* Buy less and when you do buy, buy sustainably.
* Bring your own bag to the grocery store. Say no to plastic bags.
* Say no to plastic water bottles. BYOB!
* Plant plants that help endangered insects.
* Don’t pave everything over.
Oh, I could go on and on. But for now, thank you for letting me vent.
Donate to wildlife rehabilitation centres in North America and countries around the world.
Educate yourself, your family, friends and colleagues about the devastating decrease in wild animal populations due to deforestation, polluted rivers and streams, polluted beaches and oceans, fracking, oil extraction and pipeline explosions and leaks, coal and mineral mining disasters and contributions to global warming.