World Land Trust-US fights extinction at the margin

02 Dec World Land Trust-US fights extinction at the margin

Posted Dec. 2, 2011 from Seattle WA

We live in the Age of Extinction.  It’s nothing to get depressed about or you’d be depressed all the time.  What’s exciting—the flip side of the coin–is that ordinary folks like you and me can actually make a huge difference in saving creatures and eco-systems that would otherwise simply march off to oblivion.

An organization that Delia found and we have come to really like is World Land Trust-US.  WLT-US raises money to help local people and organizations buy land in areas of the world that contain at-risk species and eco-systems. 

Much of the action is in the tropics, which are going through a transition of land-use similar to what the United States went through in the late 1800s.  I have seen photographs of the large areas of eastern Pennsylvania from the 1890’s and there isn’t a tree to be seen anywhere.  During this early cut-over of the forest, the United States lost 5 or 6 species of birds.  Had a World Land Trust been around to help them survive the first cut, they might well all still be here today and we could probably steward them into the future.

But there’s a difference.  The tropics are the Earth’s Garden of Eden.  They contain many more species of plants and animals per acre.  Small areas have endemics:  species found nowhere else.

Such is the case with a piece of land and the WLT-US’s efforts to help save it is the subject of my tiny ad that will run in the Seattle Times on Tuesday, December 6.  The ecosystem at risk is the Sierra Caral Rain Forest of Guatemala. 

http://www.worldlandtrust-us.org/

Please consider helping the World Land Trust-US in it’s race to raise the money to buy a remnant 5400 acre tract in this vanishing eden.