Preserving Our Planet

People love their cats. From cute photos, to hilarious videos, Gifs and memes shared across social media, we can’t get enough of our favourite fur balls. And yet, life for their wild cousins couldn’t be bleaker. Recent statistics on big cat numbers The twenty first century has become an exponentially dangerous place for big cats to be. Of the 40 species of wild cats, roughly 80% are now in serious decline and 25 species are threatened with extinction. This includes some of our most iconic cats that are now in the midst of a desperate struggle for survival. Lions are now extinct in 26 of the countries they once inhabited. In May 2018, 54 lions were killed in just a few days on a farm in South Africa. There are now more lions on captive farms in South Africa than in the wild there. Males are particularly popular for hunting in Africa and it is estimated that of the 20,000 left in the wild, only 4,500 are male. Tiger numbers have plummeted by 96.8% in just 20 years Th

I’ve had an 18-month hiatus from conservation blogging but I haven't stopped following the crises that occur daily around the globe.  Aside from a change in profession, studying, volunteering and being lucky enough to travel, I have followed a multitude of conservation issues and the social media excoriation of problems from the continuation of illegal hunting in the UK; the devastating bushfires in Australia; Trump’s shift in policy over trophy imports that could open the floodgates to further trophy slayings; South Africa’s lion farms, Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Greta Thunberg’s epic campaign to raise awareness of the state of climate change that saw her named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2019 . Seeing the uprising of spirited teens unwilling to accept the trajectory the planet is on for the 6 th mass extinction and social collapse is inspirational. But it also highlights the painfully toxic situation we are all a part of that governments seem adamant to quieten.