 Tigers are just one of the beautiful species of animals that face extinction in the wild if we cannot step up our efforts to conserve their habitat, and protect them from poachers.
Airmail
From: African Chimpanzee, Endangered Species of the Forest, Africa
To: American Chimpanzee, Endangered Species of the Zoo, USA
Dear Brother Chump,
How are you? How is the American Zoo? I heard rumours from human tourists who say you are covering your beautiful hair with circus clothes! Why? I was so
disappointed. In Africa, humans are killing us. We think we are in grave
danger. Our homes are destroyed and we have nowhere to go. It looks like you have a small home in the zoo, but we love living in the wild – we want to remain in our forest. Wish you were here.Your brother, Chimp.
Zelalem Getaneh, Ethiopia |
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Picture by Ali Abbas Panju, Kenya |
The dodo was a large bird found on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. It was like a big turkey with a large beak. Since it had no natural enemies, it had lost the ability to fly.
Having no experience of predators, the dodo was easy for the newly arrived European settlers to catch and kill. The rats and pigs they brought with them also killed thousands. By 1680, 80 years after the arrival of Europeans, the last dodo was dead.
In January 1999, hundreds of parrots, toucans and macaws ate fruit from farms in Guyana. In response, the farmers, using government money, poisoned the birds. People are angry because they believe that a foreign company had destroyed the birds’ habitat, which had forced the birds to invade the fruit farms.
Trevor Benn, Guyana
 We must take action against those who get satisfaction in driving species to extinction.
Tuomas Korteinen, Finland
click picture to enlarge
Picture by Ali Abbas Panju, Kenya |
Sri Lanka’s biodiversity has been pirated by countries such as Japan and the USA. These countries plunder
indigenous plants from the heart of the Sinharaja jungle and ship them out of the country. They then patent the plants which provide herbal remedies for illness and disease,
sometimes selling them back to Sri Lankans at a profit for themselves! So Sri Lanka loses out financially and
indigenous people who had the knowledge risk losing rare resources. At the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, many countries signed the Convention on Biological Diversity to outlaw this practice. The USA did not sign the convention.
R.E.P., Sri Lanka
 Many animals are in danger because people kill them for sport or profit. Can you imagine a world without animals? How can we stop it becoming a reality?
Adriana Saenz & Ariana Morales, Mexico |
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