FROM ZOO TO YOU
By Alyssa Mechler
World Wildlife Day was celebrated on March 3 this year with a focus on Forests and Livelihoods: Sustaining People and Planet. World Wildlife Day was proclaimed in 2013 to celebrate and raise awareness of the world’s wild animals and plants.
March 3 was chosen as a day of celebration, as that was the day of the signature of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1973. Forests play a central role in a lot of people’s lives as well as many of the earth’s plants and animals. World Wildlife Day works to promote practices that accommodate both humans, the long-term conservation of forests, and the forest-dwelling species.