Please Do Not Tap On the Glass

I’m going to repeat this earlier post because today is my actual birthday and I want all y’all to donate to WLD. Attend:

I wrote this for the Baraza blog on Wildlife Direct. I’m repeating it here in a shameless effort to garner more donations for Wildlife Direct.

I never thought, when I was much younger, that I would live to be 50 years old. Burning out seemed a much better alternative than fading away, but the reality is much more interesting. There’s no fading away. Instead, I moved along and made mistakes and found truths and discovered ways to live my life that give it richness and meaning and purpose and … fun. 50 is only old if you make it that way and I’ve no intention of taking that path.

So, on January 24th, I will reach the half century mark. It’s been a screamin’ fine ride so far and I anticipate a lot of exciting changes and challenges in my next half century.

One big thing that has changed the focus of my life is becoming an ethical vegan. Veganism is my moral and ethical compass, it guides my life in every possible aspect and I learn more every single day about honoring and protecting the non-human animals with whom we share this planet.

Another big thing is finding Wildlife Direct in the fall of 2006 when I stumbled on the former “Congo Warden’s blog,” now called “Gorilla Protection.” I was hooked immediately. I didn’t know anything about mountain gorillas but I was a new volunteer at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park and eager to learn as much about wildlife conservation as possible. I certainly came to the right place to learn. In the past two years I’ve learned more about African wildlife and the conservationists working to protect it than I ever thought possible. Wildlife Direct has given me opportunities to help the conservationists directly by helping them with their blogs and donating to their work. I’m also a proud bonobo “mom” to little Lukuru at Lola Ya Bonobo sanctuary.

Now, to celebrate my big, fat 50th birthday I’ve decided not to accept gifts but to instead ask my friends, family and total strangers to donate to Wildlife Direct. The team has kindly added a category for “Sheryl’s birthday present” in the donations widget under “One Time.” Please give early and often and you’ll have my heartfelt thanks and you’ll be doing something really good with your money – helping to save our wildlife.

The world is to us what the Garden of Eden was supposed to be to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were banished, but we are banishing ourselves from our Eden. The difference is that Adam and Eve had somewhere else to go. We have nowhere else to go. We hope that by the time you read this you will have at least partially curtailed our reckless greed and stupidity. If we have not, at least some of us have tried. … All we can say is learn from what we have achieved, but above all learn from our mistakes, do not go on endlessly like a squirrel in a wheel committing the same errors hour by hour day by day year after year century after century as we have done up to now. We hope that there will be fireflies and glow-worms at night to guide you and butterflies in hedges and forests to greet you. We hope that there will still be the extraordinary varieties of creatures sharing the land of the planet with you to enchant you.

–Gerald Durrell, British zoologist, 1925-1995

Thank you.

s.

Filed under: animal rights, conservation, endangered species Tagged: | animal rights, birthday donations, Elephants, Mountain gorillas, orangutans, veganism