Remembrance Day for Lost Species

11/10/2019

Important to see this in the mainstream media. There is nothing "new," though, about viewing trees as animate beings. Indigenous Peoples have frameworks for such understanding since time immemorial.

"Embedded in the bill is a bold ontological claim – that Lake Erie is a living being, not a bundle of ecosystem services...By reassigning both liveliness and vulnerability to the lake, [the bill] displaces Erie from its instrumentalised roles as sump and source. As such, the bill forms part of a broader set of comparable recent legal moves in jurisdictions around the world – all seeking to recognise interdependence and animacy in the living world, and often advanced by indigenous groups – which have together come to be known as the “natural rights” or “rights of nature” movement."

Around the world, a movement is gaining momentum that grants legal rights to natural phenomena, including rivers, lakes and mountains. Robert Macfarlane investigates the rise of the new animism

11/08/2019

Check out our updated Remembrance Day event schedule! Thank you for the use of your gorgeous art, Katlyn Brumfield. (Schedule also in text version in About section of Remembrance Day for Lost Species 2019.

12/14/2018

A powerful, urgent open letter from some of the best thinkers in the world.

"We must collectively do whatever’s necessary non-violently, to persuade politicians and business leaders to relinquish their complacency and denial. Their “business as usual” is no longer an option. Global citizens will no longer put up with this failure of our planetary duty."

Letter: 100 academics, authors, politicians and campaigners from across the world call for action to address climate change

12/02/2018

Plant names in Onondaga and Tuscarora - two Haudenosaunee languages at risk of extinction - posted around ESF's campus for Remembrance Day.

Plants and animals are not the only ones who go extinct. Keystone elements of human cultures disappear too. Languages - our species’ essential way of relating to the world - are dying at a rate of one every two weeks. 600 languages have disappeared in the last century. 90% of the world’s languages are at risk of leaving us before the end of this century.

We are standing in the homeland of the Onondaga Nation, one of the six nations in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Since time immemorial, people of the Six Nations - Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora - have lived and continue to live on this land, maintaining distinct governments, customs, and languages. Onondaga and Tuscarora languages are at critical risk of extinction.

Most endangered languages are Indigenous, carrying thousands of years of ecological and cultural knowledge between people and their habitat. When Indigenous languages are lost, biocultural knowledge disappears. The United Nations has declared 2019 The International Year of Indigenous Languages to address an urgent need to save languages and raise awareness of their crucial roles “not only as a tool for communication, education, social integration and development, but also as a repository for each person’s unique identify, cultural history, traditions and memory."

12/02/2018

"When a Language Dies" poem by Miguel León-Portilla, shared by Lucía Pérez at the Remembrance Day ceremony.

68 voces Basado en el poema “Cuando Muere una Lengua” de Miguel León Portilla Lengua: Náhuatl de la Huasteca de Hidalgo English Version: When…

11/28/2018

"Approximately 99 percent of species that have been listed under the act, including the grizzly bear, gray wolf, American alligator, and bald eagle, still survive today. The ESA is a last line of defense against species death. It works. "

And that plot begins with the fossil-fuel industry.

11/27/2018

Deep wisdom and lyrical beauty from our teacher, Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer.

"It’s not enough to just remember, we have to re-member, reclaim the lost members of the family of life. Acre by acre the prairies were broke, and acre by acre we will mend them."

As we stand together for Remembrance Day For Lost Species, I want to raise a song for all of those beings knit together by the roots of prairie sod. Our work is not to eulogise them, but to fuel the fires of renewal.

11/27/2018

Thursday, Nov. 29th, join us in observing Remembrance Day for Lost Species 2018!

11/20/2018

As we take time to remember biodiversity which has left, let's make sure we also remember great biodiverse allies still firmly among us:

Following a nine-thousand-year journey, Robin Wall Kimmerer reflects on the ancient technology embedded in our relationship with corn.

11/17/2018

The movement to pressure our politicians to attend to the planet’s crises is growing. Grateful to the courageous people of London.

Thousands of protesters occupied bridges across the Thames over extinction crisis in huge act of peaceful civil disobedience

11/14/2018

'The turning point may arrive sometime between 2030 and 2060, potentially giving the saltmarsh sparrow the distinction of becoming the first bird to go extinct as a direct result of rising sea levels.

“The conservation of this species right now — and not just this species but the whole suite of things that live in salt marshes — centers around where are the places where it’s possible for there to be marshes 30 years, 50 years, 80 years from now,” Dr. Elphick said.'

Rising sea levels are bringing more nest-flooding tides that threaten to push the birds that breed in coastal marshes along the Atlantic Coast to extinction.