Wildlife festival looks to highlight conservation
A local environmental event wants to teach participants about the importance of “conservation in your own back yard.”
The Wildlife Festival kicked off Wednesday afternoon, March 2, in North Battleford. Wildlife educator Kyle Lawrie said many people are unaware of the more than 450 different plant and animal species in Canada at risk of extinction.
“We’ll tell a lot of people about the pandas in China that are endangered, or tigers that are endangered, and then you go on to the rainforest being cut down at a substantial rate, and people know about this,” he said. “Then we ask them about animals that are at risk of extinction in their own backyards and nobody can name us five.”
Although the show does not feature any endangered animals, it uses domesticated animals to draw attention to their rarer counterparts.