Protecting Wildlife For The Health Of Humanity

April 9th to the 15th has been declared National Wildlife Week in Canada, and one person who's made wildlife conservancy her life's work says protecting wildlife is essential for the "health of humanity."

Clio Smeeton is the President of the Cochrane Ecological Institute which has been operating for 50 years. She has dedicated her life to wildlife rehabilitation and conservancy.  Smeeton says conserving wildlife is essential.

"In the 150 years that Canada has been Canada, many Canadian species have become totally extinct.  The passenger pigeon, the great auk, the plains buffalo, the plains grizzly, the swift fox.  Canada's endangered species list is still very large, and we don't want our own animals to become extinct.  

"I don't think people make animals extinct on purpose, I think when they're big populations they think they're so big nothing can happen to them, and when they disappear because nobody knows what the population is they think 'oh, there must be more out there that we haven't counted, up north or somewhere,' and then they find out that there weren't, that the animals are all gone."

Smeeton says awareness is important, but action is essential.  "National Wildlife Week is really important to make people aware that our animals must be saved, and the way animals can be saved is through public action.  Every single person who cares should write to the federal government, to the ministers, to the prime minister and they should also write to their provincial governments and say, 'we want our animals saved, we want our animals protected'."

Smeeton says there's a reason she has dedicated 50 years to conserving wildlife.  "I've done it because I believe in it.  Wildlife and wilderness is important for the health of humanity.  We need it.  Now children are suffering from something called Nature Deficit Syndrome.  They don't go where they can only see the stars and smell the trees and maybe see animals.  They don't go there."