"Protect Our Species"

Earth day, first celebrated in 1970,is an annual event celebrated on 22nd April. It is celebrated to encourage environmental protection. It was first celebrated in USA and right now is celebrated in 193 countries, which is three-fourth of the total countries in the world. Every year, earth day is celebrated with a particular theme and the theme for this year, 2019, is “Protect Our Species”.

The term ‘Species’ refer to the organisms that posses same characters and are capable of Interbreeding. The theme ‘Protection of Species’was chosen to highlight the rapid extinction of species across the world. And the credit for this extinction goes to none but us, humans. Humans have been disturbing the environment from time immemorial. To maintain a sound environmental equilibrium, every organism ranging from microbes to humans are important. All species occupy an important place in the food chain and if one of the trophic level is disturbed, the ecosystem gets disturbed. And the elimination of species can be caused by two factors. Either natural or anthropogenic factors. The loss of habitat, climatic changes, overhunting, overharvesting and pollution, all contribute to the eradication of species. We’ve already seen the extinction of various species like dinosaurs, passenger pigeon, white cheetah, etc. Not only this,a huge number of species are endangered, i. e, on the verge of extinction. Some of the endangered species are lions, tigers, rhinos, cheetah, etc.

Many projects have been launched to protect the animals. Project tiger was launched in 1973.Apart from this project dodo, project hangul and many more have been launched by the government to preserve the environment.Giraffe populations have declined from 155,000 in 1985 to under 100,000 in 2018. No international treaties protect giraffes, and the U.S. is the number one importer of giraffe trophies and parts. Habitat loss, civil unrest, illegal poaching and hunting, and climate change collectively contribute to the decline in giraffe populations.

Animals like humans don’t have any representative who’ll speak for them, they highly depend on our good will. Animals don’t just serve the environment but serve us too. We all need to join hands to rewild the world. We must stop wastage of natural resources, stop buying plastic products, reduced the usage of herbicide and pesticides. Not only this, there is a lot at our disposal that we can do to protect the species. Otherwise, many species willdisappear before we learn about them or the benefit they’ll bring to the planet Earth. The good news is that the rate of extinction can be still slowed down if we start following environmental friendly principles. Earth is the only habitable planet and it is our responsibility to preserve it for the future generations. With nearly 8 billion population on earth, individual efforts add up. So let’s all take part to preserve every possible species.