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Help save endangered species: adopt one |
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Tuesday, 12 August 2008 |
Saving the living
creatures and plants
which could soon leave
the planet forever unless
humans make a conscious
effort to protect them was
not always author and
translator Kevin
Desmond’s first priority.
Like Saint Paul,
Kevin Desmond started
out ‘on the other side’,
promoting motor boats
and other types of fuelgreedy
leisure craft. The
déclic came when he tried
an electrically-powered
boat and it was so
silent… he spotted
kingfishers. Suddenly the
flora and fauna came to
life around him.
This triggered a path
of enquiry that led him to the shocking
statistic of 16,000 disappearing species, and
the realisation that it was up to him to help in
some way. EvE-Urgent was founded with
like-minded volunteers, who aim to federate
efforts worldwide to protect vanishing animals
and plants by identifying with them.
EvE-Urgent aims to encourage
individuals, but more especially groups or
even whole towns, to adopt one species as
their ‘totem’ and to take steps to protect that
species. “It’s a bit like town twinnings,”
explained Kevin.
The idea is catching on in two communes
near Kevin’s home for the past 16 years in the
Gironde: Fraques-Saint-Hilaire is considering
adopting the elm tree, and Carignan a rare
native orchid.
The list of endangered species in the
world are on the website and while there are
certain red-alert areas
where rapid changes to
the ecosystem have put
many species at extreme
risk of extinction, for
example, the pied tamarin
monkey (Saguinus
bicolor) or the
Madagascan Flying fox
(Pteropus rufus), even
Europe can justifiably
worry about the future of
the mink (vison
d’Europe), the wild
sturgeon and even more
locally the elver, or
piballe, an over-fished
gourmet item in the
Gironde.
But Kevin stresses
that you can help species
in remote areas in many
ways. EvE-Urgent stages
a fund-raising marathon, for instance. And
communities in high-risk areas can also be
helped to protect their own: in San Polo a
community of settlers has mobilised to protect
the tamarin monkey.
Meanwhile, Kevin continues to raise
awareness through writing. He has sent
copies of his latest book, ‘'The Planet Savers...
301 Extraordinary Environmentalists’ to
Al Gore and Prince Charles. “I researched
the entire book from my home (search engines
and phone calls) to keep my carbon footprint
low,” said Kevin. “There is a long and rich
history of people who have not only tried to
tell us about the threats to our planet, but also
how to do something positive about it.”
http://eve-urgent.org
www.greenleaf-publishing.com/planetsavers
www.iucnredlist.org/
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