Friday, May 6, 2016

5/16 Creation Col.: June 5 World Env. Day


  World Environment Day, June 5, “Go Wild for Wildlife” 

 





  


An environmental Sabbath for Sunday June 5 is encouraged with the World Environment Day “Go Wild for Wildlife” theme focus on stopping the illegal trade in wildlife.

World Environment Day (WED) is the biggest annual international event for environmental action.

You are asked to do what you can to conserve and protect endangered, threatened, and imperiled “iconic” species, such as elephants, rhinos, tigers, sea turtles, and others.

Smuggling of elephant ivory tusks, rhino horns and tiger parts, for example, feeds corruption and fuels organized crime, robbing future generations of their natural heritage.

The biological diversity of our natural resources needs to be supported and enhanced.  Within the U.S.A. concerns are raised about honeybees, monarch butterflies, wolves, ocean life and fisheries, and the threats to wild habitats that support bald eagles, bison, black bears, grizzlies, moose, frogs, song birds, salmon, etc.
 
The World Environment Day (every year, everywhere, every one) web site is excellent.  Its downloads and toolkit of facts and figures about the illegal trade in wildlife, action proposals and benefits, is superb and can be adopted for other yearly proposals such as for Earth Day, Feast of St. Francis, a day devoted to the blessings of/for animals, etc.

The WED logo is a colorful fingerprint within a circle representing the diversity of people and ecosystems, thus a representation of individuality and collective personal actions that equal a force for change.

At the WED home page http://web.unep.org/wed/2016 also see the A-Z link in the lower left-hand corner.

A theological reference to be considered is Isaiah 11:6-7.  That biblical passage served as inspiration for the painting of “The Peaceable Kingdom” (1826) by 19th century Pennsylvania Quaker folk artist Edward Hicks (1780-1849).
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