The matter is not personal, as it has never touched me. But somehow I find myself hardly containing emotions at the alarming statistics involved - from 700,000 to 50,000, 45,000 to 3,000, and in a few years, possibly to 0.
I had first created this blog with the intentions of lamenting the trials and tribulations of my life, and ultimately triumphing in the end. But I soon realized the magnitude of my problems is nothing compared to those of the world. Poverty, crime, starvation. Domestic violence, child abuse, neglect. Earthquakes, flooding, landslides and tornadoes. While there have been strides and measures taken to educate the general public and ameliorate the situation on the first two sets, the characteristic they share in common is that the nation first recognizes the problems and proceeds to take the appropriate action.
As with most domestic plagues, when the situation spins out of hand international relief intervenes, and as with all short-term natural disasters the international community scrambles together nearly overnight despite cultural, linguistic, and historical differences to address the plight of the people.
Comparably long term environmental problems such as pollution, acid rain, and deforestation are slow to be addressed as the result of many aggregate factors- close links to politics, the economic situation of families and entire nations, and the eye opening magnitude in which unavailable financial resources must be used in order to reverse the damage done, and the ultimately the amount of work needed from human resources to cover to scope a sizeable area.
However, what activists have yet to champion as aggressively is a group that is oft overlooked and has no voice to speak; this is a group that has been aggressively beat, exploited and cheated, and in many regrettable, irreversible cases, exterminated, both actively and passively. Suddenly the matter became very personal. Suddenly it became clear that it is too my responsibility and the group involved I had affectionately termed my cariad, a Welsh word for darling.
The group I am talking about is all around us, the very foundation of our existence, the balance of which is no longer in their favor, a group that finds that their own teeth and poisons prove ineffective against man and his steeled teeth and synthetic poisons.
But what I am speaking of transcends the term "group". I mean the vegetation and the animals that are being hunted and exterminated for their market value, when man's greed is unchecked by laws, morality, or respect. Many times government laws do not equal action, the distinction between right and wrong ceases to exist when exceptional money is involved, and the fact that wildlife is inherently meant to be used, consumed, exploited and marked as inferior all contribute to the dire situation we have placed ourselves in.
Over the centuries, humans have wronged their own by enslaving, murdering, and creating prejudiced laws backed by equally heinous rationalities. Throughout history man asserts dominance over his own, and those with the most are called leaders. Various reasons such as intelligence and skills to differentiate the leaders from the pedestrian, they say. However the sole factors that man utilizes to distinguish man from animals, is intelligence and linguistics. This is a group that because they do not possess the ability of language or same intelligence as humans, must be inferior.
It is here that I will make a bold statement: the Animal Defense Movement of today is undeniably and rightly so comparable to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s. The crucial difference is that this group does not have a voice or a leader to speak out for them.
As a human, with the appropriate academic and technological advances, I find it unacceptable that we can not even respect the world around us or use our advances for the wellbeing of the nature around us. We admire from afar, but in reality the Amazon is being depleted at an alarming rate, creatures have been hunted for their fur, teeth, skins, body parts, but when they die out, the hunters zero in on the next closely related creature, and pollution is practically uncurbed until the effects are irreversible or damaged for generations to come.
Undergoing severe trials of suffering and states of anguish and despair that tests the endurance and patience of the individual is what one would call injustice; what would you call it then, when it has occurred for centuries? But what would you call it then, if you are too late?
With my passion and love for wildlife, the vegetation and animals in it, I intend to use my life and resources to a much overdue, overlooked, and understated cause to educate the public the importance of what is around us, to make and strictly enforce laws to protect those without a voice, to eradicate poaching and illegal trades, and most importantly, to conserve and protect the biosphere.
If I have succeeded in any way, it will be a cariad's triumph.
