To Ecosystem Enthusiasts!
TODAY, April 22, 2020 is the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day held back on this day in 1970 that touched off the modern environmental movement!
This is a historic day - held under the Covid-19 lockdown that has significantly impacted our organization's campaigns, events, and fundraising abilities.
Already generous supporters have donated $2200 towards our $5000 goal ($2800 more to go!) during these challenging times so that we can protect Canada’s old-growth forests, grasslands, deciduous forests, wetlands, and other endangered ecosystems.
Becoming a monthly donor is the most powerful way to sustain our conservation efforts, but all donations are greatly needed including one-time donations.
The Endangered Ecosystems Alliance fills a vital niche in the Canadian environmental movement. A large part of our mandate is to engage "non-traditional allies" including businesses, unions, faith groups, outdoor recreation groups, and multi-cultural outreach (rather than being limited to engaging the regular environmental activist constituency that is still too small to fundamentally change the bigger outcomes). We are also going to be playing a game-changing role to help support Indigenous Protected Areas in southern Canada (see below about the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation that we have just created), the main way protected areas are being expanded in Canada. And we are aiming for an ambitious, science-based target to protect 50% of Canada in all ecosystem types by 2030 (currently 12% of Canada's land area is protected). We have a big task ahead of us!
We hope that you and your loved ones are keeping safe during this exceptional time in history during the COVID-19 lockdown. These are uniquely challenging times of which requires our greatest levels of awareness, wisdom, and empathy.
As horrific as the virus is, the shutdown of “business as usual” presents an opportunity for society to reflect on what matters most. Here is an opportunity to connect with nature (while maintaining physical distancing), and to ponder a redirection on how we may do things better. Long after the COVID-19 epidemic has passed, we will still be facing the greatest threats to our survival – the mass extinction and climate crises.
There is evidence that the novel coronavirus and other zoonotic diseases have emerged as a result of our fragmentation of and disrespect for nature. We can ultimately help keep humanity and all life on Earth safer by taking a new path. A path that involves, among other things, a major expansion in the protected areas network across Canada and world-wide. This will be a game-changer to help avert both the extinction and climate crises.
You may have heard that the COVID-19 lockdown is putting a strain on many small businesses. The same is true for environmental non-profits like ours. We rely on public presentations, meeting people, organizing public hikes, and exploring and documenting wild areas with teams of skilled conservationists in order to build our campaigns and to raise funds. All of this important work has come to a grinding halt.
However, there are still other things we can do to ameliorate the situation, but regardless we are in need of great support from you!
The Endangered Ecosystems Alliance is now over 18 months old – still young, and financially humble (with just 2 staff), and still, we have a major influence relative to our actual budget.
Currently we have over 29,000 followers on social media (follow us on Facebook here and on Instagram here) and have reached over 1 million Canadians via social media ads on key campaigns, including the efforts to protect BC’s endangered old-growth forests, establish a South Okanagan Similkameen National Park Reserve, protect the foothills and front ranges of the Alberta Rockies, and in general push for the science-based protection of 50% of Canada by 2030 – generating thousands of messages to all levels of government.
We have just set-up a vital piece of the puzzle to scale-up the protection of endangered ecosystems across Canada: We have registered a new organization, the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation. This foundation will help raise and allocate funding to key communities – First Nations, ranchers, woodlot licensees, and others to expand the protection on public lands of the most endangered ecosystems typically neglected for protection by governments - productive old-growth forests, grasslands, southern deciduous and mixed forests that are most heavily contested by industry. While many land trusts exist to purchase private lands, very little exists in the way of major financing from conservation groups to protect public lands.
We have given presentations and organized hikes for hundreds of enthusiastic Canadians on tours in British Columbia, Ontario and Manitoba thus far, and will resume whenever this lockdown is lifted.
We have reached millions of Canadians via the news media, with numerous opinion pieces, newspaper articles, radio interviews, and TV news pieces on our campaigns.
We have explored and documented some of the most magnificent ecosystems in the country, including locating the greatest, unprotected old-growth Sitka spruce groves in the country near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island. See a recent Globe and Mail article.
We are gearing-up to launch an online campaign to help halt the closure and/or elimination 165 of Alberta’s parks – Provincial Parks, Recreation Areas, and Natural Areas, as well as to stop the sale of Alberta’s public or Crown lands. See the case of the Alberta government’s recent sell-off of an endangered grassland near Taber.
This spring we will launch a major outreach campaign to businesses, unions, faith groups, outdoor recreation groups, and many conservation groups to support the expansion of protected areas across Canada. Aligning these non-traditional groups will be a game changer in the lead-up to the UN Biodiversity Conference (postponed to early 2021) where all nation states (except the US) will negotiate a new global protected areas target and policies.
We will be greatly scaling up efforts to protect BC's endangered old-growth forests this summer and fall.
And soon we will also start organizing online presentations and “virtual tours” of endangered ecosystems so you can learn more and be inspired from your home during this lockdown.
See some of what we have done already.
See an important article on how we are special and fill a key niche.
But, to keep all these efforts going, we need your help!
Can you help us reach our target of $5000 (already $2200 has been raised at the time of this posting) by the end of Earth Day today so we can continue our work?
Monthly donations are the best way you can help us, but one-time donations are more than welcome as well. Please donate today or become a sustaining monthly donor!
Best wishes and stay safe!
Ken Wu, Executive Director
Celina Starnes, Operations and Outreach Director
Endangered Ecosystems Alliance