October 2020
Dear Friends,
As a million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, the coronavirus crisis highlights the link between human health and the destruction of biodiversity. The work of NGOs like ASPAS (Association for the Protection of Wild Animals) is a reminder that we cannot protect endangered animal and plant species without protecting their environment. We must therefore go further than ever before, and broaden our scope of action.
That is why we asked Madline Rubin, director of ASPAS, in the video that follows, to discuss the initiatives ASPAS has launched in the last 40 years to protect nature’s ‘voiceless’ wildlife.
ASPAS’s wildlife reserves go much further than protecting natural spaces: the reintroduction of animal species enriches and rebalances the biodiversity that is essential to the existence of ecosystems where humans, too, have their place.
In the course of our discussions, the Foundation and ASPAS found numerous points in common. It is my hope that the Foundation’s commitment to endangered animal species, detailed in this issue of the Newsletter, will also be taken as a call for greater mobilization in support of all the animals on our planet, whose numbers, as I need not remind you, are declining dramatically, with dangerous consequences for humanity. And I hope that this publication will also be read as a homage to all those who are committed to protecting wildlife. Often at the risk of their own lives...
In 1624, John Donne wrote: ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ We are all linked and bound together! As witnesses of the sixth mass extinction of species, we must stop the inexorable collapse of large swathes of biodiversity! Let’s make a firm commitment. And sign the Animal Referendum... Whether they be wild, farm, circus or laboratory animals, they are part of us all… And we must take care of them.
