| Music: Bless the Beasts and the Children Whispers - Home Old New Orleans Friday's Journal |
| Photo Credits: Kepguru, Pixabay, Wikimedia.Commons & the following photographers: Yathin.S.Krishnappa, Arddu, Wayne.Deeker, Duncan.Rawlinson |
| Please don't use the 'Send page' feature of your computer to send this entire page in an e-mail message or a document format or post portions of the page to social media sites. This separates the page from its source. If you'd like to share it, please just send the link. The link to this page is: http://www.thepastwhispers.com/Fragile_Home.html |
| When we look down at the earth from space, we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet; it looks like a living, breathing organism. But, above all, it looks extremely fragile. -- Ron Garran, Astronaut |
| Our Fragile Home |
| Celebrating Earth Day ~ April 22, 2018 |
| In honor of Earth Day, 2018. . . Many of the images on this page represent animals, birds or trees that are on the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species. The list is divided into categories: Extinct, Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable, Near Threatened. Most of the subjects I've chosen are from the Critically Endangered or Endangered categories. There are a few photos unrelated to the list and these will have no description under them, but the endangered subjects will be identified by name. -- Nancy |
| Bless the beasts and the children, For in this world they have no voice, They have no choice. Bless the beasts and the children, Give them shelter from the storm, Keep them safe And keep them warm. Light their way When darkness surrounds them, Give them love, Let it shine all around them. -- Perry L. Botkin and Barry de Vorzon |
| Animals are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves, in the net of life and time. -- Henry Beston |
| Giant Panda |
| Polar Bear |
| Some species of Egrets, including the Snowy Egret, are on various U.S. states' endangered lists. |
| When you are up there, feeling infinite space, the earth looks like a fragile planet against the immense universe. There may be life elsewhere, but having not yet found an alternate place, it is crucial to take care of the one place we do have. -- Guy Laliberté Laliberte, 1st Canadian space tourist |
| Sun Bear |
| I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time respecting her seniority. -- E. B. White |
| Lemur |
| The bald cypress forests of coastal Louisiana are disappearing at an alarming rate, due to over-logging by mulch companies and pollution from oil and gas drilling discharges. With the loss of the cypress trees, critical protection for marsh preservation is lost. Aside from the environmental implications, which are many and varied, the marshlands along the state's Gulf Coast used to help protect inland cities, including New Orleans, from the effects of hurricanes. A law banning cypress logging in Louisiana was passed in 2009 and Home Depot, Walmart and Lowe's had already agreed to stop selling mulch harvested from Louisiana cypresses at that time. However, illegal logging continues, with unscrupulous logging companies simply falsifying the stated source of the mulch they sell to retailers. Illegal discharges from oil companies and dumping of waste from other companies continue to be reported. |
| If we lose wilderness, we lose forever the knowledge of what the world was and what it might yet become. These are islands in time, with nothing to date them on the calendar of mankind. Here are bits of eternity, which have a preciousness beyond all accounting. -- Harvey Broome |
| Let us be good stewards of the earth we inherited. All of us have to share the earth's fragile ecosystems and precious resources, and each of us has a role to play in preserving them. -- Kofi Annan |
| Red-browed Amazon Parrot |
| Snow Leopard |
| Sun Parakeets |
| Bengal Tiger |
| Siberian Tiger |
| Asiatic Lion |
| Cozumel Raccoon (or Pygmy Raccoon) |
| I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It's fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it's tough that people are fighting each other here on earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space. -- Alan Shepard, 1st American to travel into space |
| Asian elephant |
| Coast Redwood (or California Redwood) trees are among the oldest living trees on Earth. Before commercial logging and clearing began in the 1850's, this tree occurred naturally in an estimated 2,100,000 acres along much of coastal California and the southwestern corner of coastal Oregon. Coast Redwoods were the world's largest trees before logging, with numerous historical specimens reportedly over 400 feet tall. The oldest known Coast Redwood is about 2,200 years old. Logging has taken a devastating toll on the old forests and today less than 5% of the ancient redwood forest remains, but there are ongoing efforts by environmental groups to restore old-forest characteristics to young forest stands. |
| Red Panda |
| Lories |
| There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. Everybody's crew. -- Marshall McLuhan |
| Green Peafowl |
| What a country chooses to save says a lot about what a country chooses to say about itself. -- Mollie Beattie |
| Reversing deforestation is complicated; planting a tree is simple. -- Martin O-Malley |