Earth Day and Arbor Day, 2021

Flowering crabapple in bloom

This year we are combining our Earth Day and Arbor Day issues to talk about deforestation and reforestation. You may want to revisit our 2019 Earth Day and 2020 Earth Day issues, and our 2020 Arbor Day issue, as well.

We live in the high country of western Colorado, where we are acutely aware of climate change, having lived through several consecutive years of drought. Summer temperatures continue to climb and will likely continue to do so for years, even decades.  Some climatologists have warned us that this coming August may be the hottest one on record, with many days above 94 degrees.

 

 

Such temperatures can be devastating to both people and animals. The number of deaths from heat exhaustion and heat stroke are likely to go up sharply.  They are particularly dangerous for the elderly and for children with respiratory problems.

Are catches like this a thing of the past?

 

Both livestock and native animals will suffer.  Many animals, particularly mammals and birds, are raising families at this time and mortality rates for them are already high.  In some cases. entire species maybe wiped out. High temperatures, especially combined with low water levels, threaten native fish populations as well.  In some places stream flows are shrinking so much that officials are calling for limits on fishing or even years when there may be no fishing at all.

Last year we saw the three most severe wildfires in state history. There is no longer a "fire season".  Major fires can — and do — happen year around. In their wake come landslides and more frequent and severe avalanches.  Without protective ground cover, the land will not hold snow-melt or spring rains, often causing flash flooding down-stream.

 

Native mule deer (print by Annake)

Here in Colorado, the large areas where whole stretches of forest died from beetle-kill some years ago have posed even more problems.  A decision was made over large areas neither to clear-cut nor to cut patches or lanes of dead trees and replant with aspen or young evergreens that are immune to the beetles.  This has led to both large, unsightly areas of dead trees along major highways and also loss of habitat for many native animals.

 

Except for water birds, almost all native birds — from songbirds to raptors — are dependent upon trees for food, shelter, nesting places, etc.  Clear-cutting of large areas of native forest interrupts birds' migration patterns, breeding seasons, number of broods, survival of offspring, and general health of the populations.  Some birds can, given time, adjust to living in towns and cities, but most cannot.  The barn owl,  for example,  can be found in barn lofts and other relatively undisturbed places as well as in the wild, but it has had centuries in which to make that adjustment. Other species are running out of time.

Rocky Mountain Goat (print by Annake)

Oddly enough,  the wood of the dead trees is extremely attractive and is much in demand for architectural panels and other uses. Now, it might seem simple to clear-cut the areas and use the money for the sale of the wood to pay for new plantings, but that may not be such a good idea. Clear-cut areas of 40 acres or more often suffer from erosion and over-use.  There would be no shelter for the small, newly-planted trees.  A slower approach with smaller clearings may be more successful, particularly where the land is relatively steep.  Planting aspen first might give a better chance for successful reforestation. Quick-growing but relatively short-lived, the aspen could act as  "nurse trees" for the young evergreens while creating beautiful autumn scenes to attract viewers.  Another suggestion that has merit is to choose young evergreen species from places like New Mexico and Arizona, which are already adapted to hotter and drier climates.  By the time the trees mature, the climate is likely to have become even hotter and drier.  Experts from many fields need to cooperate to design good plans for these areas.

Click here to download

Earth Day will be celebrated on April 22nd, 2021, in 170 different countries. The poster to the left is available as a free download from the U.S. government website, https://share.america.gov/.  There is also an official Earth Day 2021 poster available at https://www.earthday.org/, by Brazilian artist Speto, which is being sold for fund raising.

 

The theme for this year is "RESTORE OUR EARTH!" First and foremost, discussion will be about the disappearance of the planet's tropical rain forests.

Tropical rain forests are found on both sides of the Equator, usually between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. They are rapidly disappearing due to clear-cutting for farms and ranches, as well as simply for money. Let me try to put this in perspective. One and a half acres of trees are cut down every second. That means 36 football fields worth of trees are cut every minute. Multiply that by the minutes in an hour and the hours in a day and you can see how enormous the problem is. Twenty percent of the world's oxygen is generated by rain forest trees.  About 20,000 species of rain forest plants are expected to disappear in the next 25 years. When you consider that at least a quarter of our current cancer-fighting drugs, as well as other medicines, come from the rain forests of the Amazon, that is a very significant fact. Deforestation also disrupts the water cycle. Trees absorb groundwater and release it back into the atmosphere through the process of transpiration from their leaves. That water is pure and clean, making the air good to breathe.

 

Endangered Species, a few of many

If you are concerned, as you know we are, for endangered species of animals, just think of this: the existing rain forests cover only about 7 per cent of the earth's surface. But they contain more than HALF of the earth's species. Just this morning I read an article about how illegal poaching of elephants for their ivory tusks, combined with the loss of habitat from deforestation, are pushing the African elephants closer and closer to extinction.  And that is just one species among many.

Much of the deforested trees are used for the making of paper.  The greatest consumers of that paper are from North America, Europe, and Japan. None of these areas have rain forests of their own. The average U.S. household may get as much as 40 pounds of "junk mail" every year.  That makes recycling and reuse a "must" for most of us.

Free stickers/stamps available from the Arbor Day Foundation

"In Times of Uncertainty, Plant a Tree."

Dan Lambe, President, Arbor Day Foundation

The official date for Arbor Day 2021 is April 30, 2021.  Ordinarily there would be a special theme with special activities to honor the occasion. But this is not an ordinary year. The pandemic has made many activities difficult or impossible.  Arbor Day started in the U.S. in the state of Nebraska and became a country-wide celebration. It has now spread to many other nations around the world.  Each state may have its own designated Arbor Day. The dates vary greatly from Florida to Alaska, depending upon the dates when young trees can safely be planted. Free trees which are appropriate for a region are available from the Arbor Day Foundation.

Here are some suggestions for activities which individuals, families, or small groups, following the Covid rules, might do to celebrate the occasion:

• Plan a hike or bike ride to a park or forest are to study and admire the trees. Stay on the designated paths. take a bag along and pack out any trash that you come across. Enjoy and appreciate the trees.
• Make a poster, take a photograph, draw or paint a picture of a particular tree. Check out our post, "Trees in Art and Design," to give you some ideas.
• Read the poem "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer, or write a poem, rap, or song about forests or a particular tree.
• Search for online lessons about trees, forestry, what to do (and all the things that you should NOT do) if you are lost, injured, or stranded in a forest.
• Learn how to understand, interpret, and count tree rings.
• Join and/or contribute to a group fighting for the survival and recovery of the rain forests. The Arbor Day Foundation and EarthDay.org are great places to start; plus, they have their own lists of activities that you can add to this one.
  

What does he do who plants a tree
He plants for sap and leaf and wood,
In love of home and loyalty,
And far-cast thought of civic good
His blessing on the neighborhood.
                                             Charles Lathrop Pack

To the trees!

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Looking Forward and Backward: Spring Q and A, 2021

Spring Aliums

It is time to catch up on questions and comments left over from as far back as last winter and give some indication about topics we plan to take up in the near future.

Our family just loved the blog post about owls!  Are you planning more like it about special animals?

Let's see, we have done butterflies, fish (mostly freshwater), and owls so far. I think frogs are probably the next animals we will feature.  I can't give you a timeline yet, but I would think we will probably do it in early summer.  That seems like an appropriate time for frogs (and perhaps a toad or two).  We are so happy your family liked the owls. Here is an extra one for you.

Originals needlepoint by Annake

Are you going to do anymore quizzes and games?  We played most of the games at home and some with my sister and her kids over the phone.  We would sure like to see some more of them.

Summer flowers

We are happy to hear that you liked them. I won't promise any because we have a lot promised already and the Covid-19 situation has made scheduling anything more difficult.  I would like to do something for the Summer Solstice and some of the "midsummer madness" that has gone along with it over the centuries, and I will do that if I get the opportunity.  If not, it will probably be autumn before I can do anything along those lines.

 

Did you get any negative comments on saying that there is only one race, the Human Race?

Not really.  But, since you have brought it up, I would like to say a little more from my point of view.

Lots of colors in this multi-ethnic crowd...

Let me tell you a couple of personal stories to illustrate my "take" on life. My paternal grandmother was a Frisian immigrant fleeing disease and poverty. She crossed the Atlantic in steerage and went more than halfway across the U.S. to marry a man with whom she had corresponded, but whom she had never met. She was a midwife and an herbalist. I lived with her for a while when I was little, in a small town on the Missouri/Arkansas border. She delivered more than 150 babies in her lifetime. When she turned 75, some forty or more of the people she had delivered lined up in rows by her front fence to sing "Happy Birthday".  I was enchanted.  "Grandma, they're so pretty! They are all different colors!"  She told me that was the way it should be because that was how the Good Lord made us and He loves us all. Later she taught me not to judge people by their appearance or what they did for a living, but by how they treated other people — a lesson I never forgot.

Not too long ago, a lady with skin a little darker than mine said I couldn't understand something in her life "because you're white." I told her I have never considered myself "white". I have Native American blood and Gypsy blood, and somewhere down the line there are slanted eyes. My other grandmother had them. I don't, but one of my children does. None of those ancestors were ever accused of being "white".  I always checked "Other" on paperwork, or wrote "Human" on the line for race. The way I feel is that I'm Multicolored and I'm proud of it!

What's next in the "All About Color" series?

Right now I am researching and writing a post about The Psychology of Color. That is something that has always fascinated me. It will be the next one in the color series.  It is a big topic with many facets that are pertinent right now, so it may take some time to finish it.

 

Are you going to do something for Earth Day this year?  How about Arbor Day?

Spring foliage in the forest

Since they are so close together, we are planning to combine the themes in one post this year. We live in a high mountain area which has seen extreme drought for several years. There is no more "fire season" now: fires can and do erupt the year around.  Last year we saw devastating fires that will affect the area for decades.

We have had friends call us from towns in the valley to alert us to smoke or flames erupting on the heights above us. Autumn before last we came down from a day enjoying and photographing the aspens to emerge on the highway where more than half a dozen cars were parked every-which-way on the pavement while people took pictures of a blaze starting up the side of the mesa.  Not a single person had called the nearest fire department!!! We called for help and pretty much bullied the crowd into moving their vehicles out of the way of the engines we could already hear racing up from the nearest town.  We got our own vehicle onto a side road. Fortunately only one slope of a small ravine burned.  We plan to talk about fire prevention and safety as well as the broader aspects of the importance of preserving our global forests and the impact they have on the health of the planet.

Lots to think about and plan for!

Spring Flowers

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What Is Earth Day?

*** NEW MATERIALS ON OUR EXTRAS PAGE  ***

See more info at end of this post.

Earthrise, photo graphed from Apollo 8

ANNAKE: Those of you who read our post on Earth Day 2019 know that I worked on a project which in 1967 made the Earth Sciences (Astronomy, Geology, Meteorology, Oceanography) mandatory parts of the science curriculum for grades 1-12 in all 50 states. We did a tremendous amount of research while we were trying to determine what scientific principles should be taught at each level. Things that we learned in climatology (a branch of meteorology) and oceanography alarmed us, and we were also made aware of the mass extinctions of much of our planet's animal and plant life. Most of us had also read Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, published in 1962.

Not long ago we held a yard sale in which I included a number of outdated science books, including some that had been sent to me by publishers after the new science curriculum was established. One gentleman was very excited by the books and asked me about them. I explained about our efforts in 1967. He thanked me profusely for our efforts. He said he had never known there was such a thing as geology until he read about it in a new textbook. He was "hooked for life". He majored in geology in college and had spent his life as a geologist until the previous year, when he retired.

The Grand Canyom, a geologist's playground

But, while we got the courses into the textbooks, we did not get the emphasis on those disturbing trends highlighted as we thought they should be.  When we received the textbooks from various publishers the following year, very little, if anything, was said about these issues. We felt that no one was listening to us. We wrote letters to teachers in other states, members of state and national government, science magazines, etc. and spoke to our students in detail about environmental issues. Some very important people were listening to us — our students — but they were not really in a position to make much of a difference yet.

One member of Congress shared our concerns — Gaylord Nelson, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. He was alarmed by the air pollution that was prevalent in large cities and disastrous oil spills like the one in the ocean off California in 1969. He set out to promote what he described to the media as a "natural teach-in" about environmental issues. On April 22, 1970, 30 million Americans — many of them college students and other youths —  from coast to coast attended conferences and rallies on environmental issues. That was the first Earth Day. In that same year the Environmental Protection Agency was created. Many environmental projects were supported by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. (Yes, that can happen!)  Important legislation was implemented, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Environmental Protection Act. Earth Day was, and still is, celebrated on April 22nd every year.

Clean air, clean water, clean shores - the American Dream?

For some years, this was an American project, growing in strength and numbers every year. But in 1990 Earth Day went global. It reached 200 million people in 141 countries. President Clinton presented Senator Nelson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest honor a civilian can receive in the U.S.

"It was a gamble, but it worked."  — Senator Gaylord Nelson

The theme for Earth Day 2020, on its 50th  anniversary, is Climate Control, because this is a major issue which affects everyone and must be dealt with now.

J.D.: For about the last 25 years, it has become popular in certain circles to deny that climate change is happening at all; or, if it is happening, that it is just a temporary statistical anomaly or a slow, gradual natural process that we can easily adapt to. For whatever reason — greed, shame, an attempt to avoid blame, belief in massive global conspiracies, ignorance, or just inertia — some cling to this belief despite the overwhelming evidence right before their eyes. Like this:

• The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the highest it has been for 3 million years.
• The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years.
• In the year 2019, almost 400 all-time high temperatures were set in the Northern Hemisphere.
• The continent of Australia suffered extreme drought, enormous wildfires, and the loss huge numbers of endangered species.

Melting glacier

• Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice six times faster than they did just 20 years ago. The amount of ice lost by their ice sheets last year would cover the entire state of Texas with a layer of ice 30 feet deep.
• Permafrost, the layer of soil in the arctic that has been frozen for centuries, is melting. This is releasing methane gas gas which was trapped there. Methane is one of the most serious greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. NASA has equipped planes with highly sensitive methane detectors. They have flown over 11,583 square miles (30,000 square kilometers) of Arctic tundra in North America, Asia, and Northern Europe, so far detecting 2 million of these methane "hotspots".
• But there is something else disturbing about the thawing of permafrost. People have been buried in shallow graves in this layer for a very long time. Scientists have already encountered viable samples of the virus which killed so many people in what was called the "Spanish flu" pandemic in 1918. They are now concerned about finding scarlet fever. And it is possible that smallpox — which was declared eradicated in 1980 — may make a reappearance. People have not been vaccinated for that deadly disease for four decades.

• Famine is another danger; in just the past few weeks, countries in Africa and the Near East have lost — and are still losing — huge amounts of their food supplies to hordes of locusts.

Flood

• Hurricane season is expanding at both ends.
• In 2019 Hurricane Dorian tied the 84-year record for having the strongest winds at landfall and became the 5th strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in terms of atmospheric pressure.
• Since 1995 there have been 17 above-normal hurricane seasons.
• Now 800 million people are already vulnerable to climate change impacts such as droughts, floods, heat waves, extreme weather events, sea level rise and health issues.

That number goes up daily.

It’s bad, folks, and getting worse. If anyone wants to argue how we got here or why, or who is to blame, save it for another time and place; right now, we all need to do whatever we can to improve the situation. More importantly, we need to STOP doing anything that might make things even worse: when your house is on fire, you don’t solve the problem by throwing gasoline on it.

A climate agreement was signed by 195 nations in 2016, agreeing to limit global warming, adapt to climate change, and protect Nature. The United States is not currently one of them.

Endangered Lemur (Photo by J.J.)

ANNAKE: You probably know that those of us here at Annake's Garden are crusaders for the protection of endangered species. Recently the Weather Channel ™ did a nice interview with National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore. Some years ago, while Sartore was photographing a small, rather insignificant-looking sparrow called the grasshopper sparrow,  in Florida, he became interested in species — like that little bird — that were threatened with extinction. After his photo of the bird appeared on the cover of a national magazine, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Service devoted resources to ensure its survival.

Now Sartore is devoting his life to photographing, to the best of his ability, every endangered species while it is still here. He thinks it will take him another fifteen years to complete his project, called The Photo Ark. He films mostly in studios and in protected places like zoos and aquariums.  Most of the animals are photographed against a solid black or white background so that the focus is entirely on the animal.

Sartore says that when people look at one of his animal photographs, they are drawn to its eyes. There they see beauty, curiosity, determination, and other characteristics the we, ourselves, possess. All the photos are the same size, so that a little mouse is just as important in its portrait as an elephant is in its portrait. Each one plays a part in the ecology of the Earth and every one is important to all of us.

Cheetah, print by Annake

I really identify with that idea. When I do an animal "portrait",  I look at dozens — sometimes hundreds — of photographs, paintings, even cartoons.  But I don't want to portray just AN animal; I want to show THE animal. The last part of the picture that I put in is the animal's eyes. It is only then that I know the animal — in a way and at a level that I cannot truly explain.

Sartore says that an iconic photograph, which stands the test of time, can long outlive the photographer.  It tells a story. Photographs and photographic projects like The Photo Ark can illuminate the problem and save many endangered animals, if we care enough to help.

For examples of things that young people (and even those of us not so young) can do to help this coming Earth Day — and every day — check out these documents under our Extras tab:

• Teachable Moments: Preparing Children to Be Good Environmental Citizens 
• Teachable Moments: What "Tweens" Can Do to Help the Environment 
• An Open Letter to Teenagers about Good Environmental Citizenship

*** Our  "Extras"  page (the last tab on the top menu) has PDF files of extra materials related to the subjects in our blog posts, mostly aimed towards young people, their parents and teachers. Due to the current pandemic resrictions, we intend to expand this section greatly over the next two months. Check back every week for new files.

J.D., Annake's Garden Gnome

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Earth Day 2019: An Open Letter from Annake, J.D., & J.J.

Dear Readers,

Welcome to Earth Day, 2019.

Annake:  In 1967 I was teaching science in a secondary school not far from Washington, D.C. I was privileged to work on a committee that developed a mandate to include the Earth Sciences — Astronomy, Geology, Meteorology and Oceanography — in science education for grade levels K through 12 all across the United States.  We also developed standards for the most important topics to be taught at the various levels. We did a massive amount of research for this project. Much of what we learned, particularly in meteorology and oceanography, we found very distressing. We agreed that much more attention needed to be paid to climate change, air pollution, water pollution, ocean pollution and vanishing species. Our program was approved. Many publishers vied to make good textbooks for the program. I still have a couple of those "first edition" textbooks.

We put the program to work the following year. Quite a number of our students were interested in the issues we raised and went on to take follow-up courses in college. A few even chose one of those fields for his or her profession. Unfortunately, not enough people listened to us or to the scientists whose work we respected and described. That was more than half a century ago. These are not new issues.

... and Oceanography

Now hardly a day passes that we don't see pictures of some large-scale disaster or hear cautions about new ones yet to come — some of them in the very near future. We assumed that the Earth had such riches that we could exploit them forever. We thought that the oceans were so huge and so deep that nothing that we did to them would make any difference. We imagined that huge numbers of species of plants and animals could go extinct and it wouldn't matter to us.  Well, we were wrong!

Kaibab Squirrel

I don't have grandchildren. If I did, I would be worried that their children would not know the beautiful creatures of the Rocky Mountain West (much less those of the rest of the world) except from the pictures that I, their great-grandmother had drawn for them. They might never know the joy of watching a young eagle swoop and dive, riding the thermals just for fun. Or see a native trout swim up through clear water to snatch a fly from the surface. Or see a family of mountain goats dash nimbly down a steep rock face. Or see Kaibab squirrels frisking along the rim of Grand Canyon.

I cannot fight on all the ecological fronts, but I have chosen to use my art, my writing, and my voice to support efforts to protect, preserve, and propagate the wonderful creatures we still have around us.  That is my Earth Day promise.

ANNAKE

Rocky Mountain Bighorn, needlepoint by Annake

J.D.:  In the early 1970’s, I spent a year taking classes on one of the University of Colorado campuses. Two courses stand out in my memory: Environmental Economics and Biogeochemical Cycles. In the first, we ran cost-benefit analyses on the pluses and minuses of various environmental policies. In the latter class we examined the interaction between all of those systems and cycles we were exposed to in high school science classes – like the Krebs cycle, or the eleven-year cycle of sunspot activity.

A half-century after completing those classes, two conclusions have stuck with me: first, when you stack simple systems one on top of the other, and then hook them together, things get very complicated and hard to predict. Second, when it comes to building, maintaining, and modifying complex systems that are robust, redundant, and efficient, Nature does an infinitely better job than humans.

So, when it came time to make an appeal to preserve and conserve the ecology of this planet and the multitude of endangered species we share it with, I decided I would simply speak to your self-interest.

Wood Frog

Amphibians — frogs, toads, and salamanders — as an order are under massive threat of extinction. Species after species are suffering huge population losses, and we don’t understand why in a lot of cases. Why should we care about a bunch of small, slimy, cold-blooded creatures? They aren’t a potential food source, they aren’t cute and cuddly, most of them aren’t even pretty. Why should we spend our limited resources on trying to save them when other things demand our immediate attention?

Many amphibians can regrow lost limbs and we don’t know yet how they do it. Researchers are racing to learn all they can before their study subjects disappear. Many species of amphibians estivate: they survive in a state of “suspended animation” through extended periods of extreme climate conditions with minimal signs of life, then miraculously emerge when conditions improve. You don’t have to stretch your imagination very far to see the medical benefits to you, personally, of being able to regrow a lost or damaged limb or survive a crisis in suspended animation.

Endangered Buckwheat

Let's consider plants. There is an extremely threatened type of wild buckwheat in western Colorado that grows in alkaline clay, a notoriously tough soil to get anything to grow in. Buckwheat is a good food plant (just try some buckwheat pancakes, they’re delicious) and this particular variety of plant has been observed hosting over fifty different pollinator species, which local crops may depend on with the spread of honeybee diseases.

Hummingbird Moth, a pollinator native to Colorado

Endangered Milk Vetch

Also in our region of the state there are two highly endangered species of milk vetch, an unlovely name for a pretty ordinary-looking plant. Vetches are members of the pea family, so they fix nitrogen in the soil to keep it fertile. One of these species also concentrates selenium in its parts. Selenium is an important micro-nutrient that is essential for people in small doses, but harmful in higher concentrations — fish from many impoundments in Colorado are inedible due to selenium from agricultural runoff. Milk vetches are members of the genus Astralagus, the same sort of plants as what’s in the herbal supplement section in your grocery store. It's been used for centuries to treat a variety of human ills. Who knows what medical benefits we might miss out on if these plants are lost.

There you have my argument for supporting endangered species preservation: no blaming, no fuzzy New Age philosophy, no moral arguments; just cold, simple logic. Your ability to grow food, treat your ills and injuries, have safe water to drink, even air to breathe, could depend on plants and animals that are close to being gone forever. We need to save these organisms and every one that we can of thousands more because our very existence may depend on them.  We don’t know nearly enough to replace them or bring them back when they’re gone.

J.D.

J.J.:  Greetings to the readers of Cuttings from Annake’s Garden.  I'm J.J. I'm so pleased to make your acquaintance. I understand that you have "met" me through some of my photographs. Thank you for your positive comments about them. Positivity is very important to me. Like Annake and J.D., I am a blogger. Since this is Earth Day, it seems like the perfect time to tell you about my work and to explain why I do it.

Meerkat

After I became discouraged with seeing all the negative posts on Facebook™, I made a commitment to share only Positive posts on my Timeline, letting it be known that my Timeline needed to be a place anyone could come to, from teen to great grandparents; knowing they would not have to see negativity, but instead be uplifted by Positive shares. That was when I created Facebook™ Critter Friends (FBCF).  ("Critter" is simply a term of endearment encompassing all animals, including our pets.) It did not start off with a bang, as it was not your typical project. It was NOT a charity, nor a fundraiser, you were NOT expected to go out and adopt a pet. In fact, you needn't even have a pet, as this was about the love of critters and the fact that anyone could participate. It confused people as they thought there must be a catch. However, the only stipulation to participate in FBCF was (and is) to change your profile picture to that of a pet or critter for one day.

Cheetah cubs

The FB Critter Friends Albums belong to everyone who has participated, by having a critter as their profile picture. Some critters are wild and funny, some are sentimental, perhaps a share of a beloved pet who has passed over the Rainbow Bridge. I've invited artists and photographers, thinking what a positive way to showcase their work. The result is not only the Critter albums, it is much, much more! We have an awesome group of loving, caring people, who may not use the same spoken language, yet understand the universal language of respect and love of our Critter Friends. If you are a positive person, who promises to share with no negativity towards animals, you are a perfect FB Critter Friend.

"Are You Nuts?", photo by J.J.

I work on many albums daily. Humans and critters are similar in surprising and wonderful ways. We have a Rainbow Bridge album where we recognize our beloved pets who have gone on before us. We have albums which show kids and critters, different species who get along just fine, older humans and critters, a black and white album, as well as a colorful critter album. There are some informative albums, fantasy albums, oceanic critters, butterflies. My favorites are the ones that make people smile.

Endangered Lemur

I do see more Positive signs in the treatment of critters and the attitudes toward them. More people than ever are concerned about endangered species all over the world. There are more and more groups working to help those displaced by natural disasters and to find them Forever Homes. Scientists are really studying how critters do the amazing things they do and are even using what they have learned to make people's lives better. For example, look at all the dogs and others that have become service animals. People pledge more money for rescue and adoption efforts. Zoos are no longer just for entertainment, but now serve as educational institutions and places where endangered species are not only protected, but also able to grow their numbers so that someday they can, hopefully,  be returned to the wild.

The goal, of course, is to teach people to love and respect critters. There is so much to learn from them.  And new species are being discovered and identified all the time. My goal is to help educate so that generations from now, the critters we learn to love will no longer make lists for endangered or extinct species. I, for one, cannot imagine a world without critters.

 J.J.

Best Wishes to all of you, for a Happy Earth Day!

Picture Credits: All needlepoint, drawings, and other artwork are by Annake (photos by J.D.);  "Geology" photo by J.D.                                   Wood Frog courtesy of National Parks Service;  Buckwheat and Milk Vetch photos courtesy of USFWS 
 All other photos by J.J.

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.