Conservation

Why conservation? Conservation comes in many ways, water, electricity and so on but what I'm refering to or my main area of concern has been conservation of species and bio-diversity. For me, wildlife conservation is about preserving bio-diversity and this involves many areas... Habitats, ecosystems and species. Most of us wouldn't see the importance in doing so but just imagine life Without bio-diversity... What if there was only one type of bird in the whole wide world? One type of cat, One type of fish... Would be very boring, right?

Conservation has a very important role to play now especially with the focus on Global Warming... Why? Well.. consider this simple fact. Global Warming means our atmosphere is warming up and as a result of this warming up, Polar Ice Caps are melting... In other words, the Arctic & Antarctic is getting smaller as they are basically formed out of ice. But that's not all, when they melt, sea levels rise... in other words, land masses are shrinking so God forbid that one day Pulau Batu Puteh may dissapear under the Johore Straits... There... land dispute solved!!

But anyway... Almost everything in our environment is connected sort of like a circle of life... (Plagiarised from Lion King... :-)). For example, in the ocean... there are small organisms called Plankton which feed small fishes which in turn feed bigger fishes who are preyed on by sea mammals or even bigger fish who are then preyed on by man or also other animals. I know that's not the point that was sent across in Lion King but that's my interpretation but When one goes, so will the other. When there's no plankton, the smaller fishes will die and when that happens, so do the big fishes... Anyway, you get the point.

For me, I am all for conservation because I am nuts about animals and as well, I want to be able to show my kids and grandkids (Wah... still a long way to go) what a turtle is... What a polar bear is... not from pictures but I want to show them a live one. It's sad knowing that future generations may not know what Polar Bears look like. I am blessed to have been able to see green turtles and hawksbill turtles but sad knowing that it's unlikely I will be able to see a live Leatherback turtle (Penyu Belimbing)... at least not in Malaysia.

I am lucky enough to have seen Orcas, Polar Bears and Pandas (albeit not in the wild) but I'm sure many of you haven't. All the more reason why we need to do our part starting now.

One goal that I have in turtle conservation is that I hope in 15 - 20 years, when I return (ha ha... If I return) to Chagar Hutang, Redang, one of the nesting turtles will be one of the ones that hatched when I was a volunteer in 2003 or 2005.

How about you? What have you done to ensure that we human beings are not the only ones left on Earth in the years to come?