Weekly Photo Challenge: From Lines To Patterns… and by the way… You Can Help World Animal Day

The Weekly Photo Challenge is from lines to patterns. So take a look at the pattern on the face of this Roan antelope. Scrunch your eyes up so that the face is a blur. Now you can see the way the shape of the face is broken up and everything follows a vertical theme… like perhaps small saplings and vegetation.

OK… on with the show!

It’s World Animal Day On October 4th And You Can Get Involved

Here’s how:Hold an event for World Animal Day.

Look at the World Animal Day website for ideas.

Check out some of the events lined up for this year and take a look at those from previous years.

Decide on your event; submit it and do it.

World Animal Day has a Wikipedia World Animal Day page devoted to it.

World Animal Day was started in 1931 at a convention of ecologists in Florence as a way of highlighting the plight of endangered species. October 4 was chosen as World Animal Day as it is the Feast Day of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals.

Since then, World Animal Day has become a day for remembering and paying tribute to all animals and the people who love and respect them. It’s celebrated in different ways in every country, with no regard to nationality, religion, faith or political ideology.

We’ve Submitted Our Event

We’ve submitted our event.

It’s to send a World Animal Day card to political influencers in the UK – and invite them to visit World Animal Day site and to pledge themselves to help animals.

Chances are you are probably ‘pro’ animal. That means different things to different people, but here are a few common touch points.

You are in favour of animals being allowed to continue without going extinct.

That means cutting back on habitat destruction.

It means stopping poaching.

It means a more careful use of pesticides that work their way up the food chain.

It means a more considered approach to pollution and industrial practices that endanger climatic and ecological equilibrium.

The list goes on, and I will have missed a few that you are thinking of right now.

It also means treating domestic animals humanely.

Huge numbers of people worldwide eat animals or fish or some form of living creature – so it’s not meaningful to say we should all be vegetarians.

But treating animals humanely during their lives is something everyone can sign up to today.

Got An Idea Of Who We Should Send A Card To?

You can help us by suggesting who we should send a card to. We are thinking of people who have a track record of being ‘pro animal’ as well as those who don’t seem to care a rat’s …

Just off the top of my head I am thinking of the UK’s opposition to a ban across the European Union on neonicotinoid pesticides.

And right now in the UK there is the badger cull.

It is being carried out on extraordinarily poor grounds not supported by any scientific study.

It is a stab at eliminating bovine tuberculosis without convincing evidence that badgers are even the cause of it.

And if we look across the world, there are reports and films and articles gathering momentum about the illegal ivory trade, the killing of endangered species, the cry for help to stop the increasingly rapid extinction of species.

It makes me sick. It makes me physically nauseated.

It makes me angry.

So there are a few people I can think of for the event – to send a card to.

Drop me a line on the Contact page or leave a comment here with your suggestions of who we should send a card to.

The Cards We’ll Be Sending

We’ll be sending two cards. One of them features this image of an antelope… with text over it. The other features a white rhino with some different text.

And there is a plea for action inside the cards. To drive more interest I’ll put an image of the cards up in day or two in a separate post together with the message in the cards.

Yes, I took both photos… in England in reserves where the animals will live a safe life. Don’t we all wish these could live in the wild and be safe from poachers and safe from the markets that make poaching an international killing game?