On May 17, the world celebrated National Endangered Species Day. Learning about our environment and how our actions affect animal’s lives allows us as humans to change our ways of life in order to protect and save as many animals as possible. Moreover, teaching young children and young adults about protecting and preserving animals and wildlife will shape them into our world’s next leaders. Educating people about the ways they can live successful lives and protect the world they live in and its inhabitants. This was the main goal of National Endangered Species Day around the world. Keep reading to find out more about Endangered Species Day and in what ways you can help conserve our world’s most threatened species before they become extinct, and in what ways you can prevent possible issues.

This year marked the thirteenth annual celebrated Endangered Species Day. This holiday was established in  2006 when the United States Congress named the third Friday in May, Endangered Species Day. Throughout the month, zoos, parks, aquariums, and community conservation groups as a whole throughout the country hold ceremonies, presentations, and activities to raise awareness for threatened animals and celebrate ways to help during everyday schedules, by changing the ways, we discard our trash and treat our environment.

May 17 was not your only chance to do any of the next things to protect our earth, but you should, in fact, do these every day or whenever they are prompted. On an everyday basis, there are many things you can do to help the environment, therefore, making it safer for animals. Some ways include saving electricity, conserving energy, picking up trash and discarding of it correctly, recycling, and most importantly ending plastic pollution. Turning off lights and unplugging things that are not in use is an easy way to help the environment around the house. The most important of all is eliminating plastic waste and if you use it, discarding of it correctly. Too much of human plastic waste ends up in our oceans and wildlife habitats. In order to minimize this issue, you can use recyclable materials and reuse containers after each use.

In an effort to raise awareness, Endangered Species Day highlights the most threatened species to this day. Some of the most imperiled consist of the Northern Right Whale, Javan Rhinoceros, Leatherback Sea Turtle, and, most sadly of all, the majestic Tiger, along with countless more. As our society continues to industrialize and pollute the air we breathe, us humans will continue to invade wildlife habitats. Senior Melissa Schroder noted ways that people hurt the environment every day. She said, “I think that humans are hurting animals and their environment mainly through pollution and harmful activities such as overexploitation.” However, she did suggest some ways that we can improve our ways of life and maintain a healthy planet when she mentioned, “Humans can help by just being more conscious of their individual ecological footprint and trying to reduce this negative impact.” Our ecological footprint is the impact we have on our environment and is expressed in the number of resources we use to survive. If we reduce the size of our impact, we have a pretty good chance of changing the world. Hopefully, after reading this you have discovered all about how our everyday actions can result in a negative way but also how we can help change our lifestyles for a better tomorrow and overall future.