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| Image Courtesy of Google Images |
Isn’t this
little guy adorable? Well, unfortunately, him and all his relatives are in
serious danger of going extinct. At the
moment, only 1600 giant pandas are known to be alive in the wild (“Giant Panda”). 1600 pandas—let that sink in. That is smaller than the number of students
that are enrolled in my high school.
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| Courtesy of TwistedSifter.com |
This extremely
low number is due to the fact that humans are destroying their natural habitat
and turning them into areas for economic gain (“Giant Panda”). It is also due to “large scale development
activities, such as road construction, hydropower development, and mining” (“Solutions”). As humans, we need to have a little more
humanity and be considerate of the other beings on our planet.
In order to save
these wild animals, we must take actions such as:
- Increasing nature reserves,
- Creating green corridors to link isolated pandas,
- Patrolling against poaching and illegal logging,
- Building local capacities for nature reserve management, and
- Continued research and monitoring ("Solutions").
You might think
that these are not things that you can do by yourself (which you’re probably
right). But you can donate to the World Wildlife Fund, and
they will use every donation to help endangered animals all around the world.
The World
Wildlife Fund (WWF) is an organization that strives to conserve nature and
protect the environment that humans often destroy with their greedy
actions. They are
“committed
to reversing the degradation of our planet's natural environment and to
building a future in which human needs are met in harmony with nature” (“World
Wildlife Fund”).
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| Courtesy of CharityNavigator.com |
I’m
sure some of you are skeptical that the money you give will not actually go
towards saving the animals, but the World Wildlife Fund assures all of their donors that their
money is not being wasted. In fact,
nearly 75% of their expenses go directly towards helping endangered animals and
sustaining the environment. Also,
another 20% of the expenses go towards fundraising activities and getting
people to donate (“World Wildlife Fund”).
The
number of endangered animals grows daily; According to the Endangered Species
International Organization, today there are a total of 16,938 species that are
threatened to go extinct (“Overview”).
Click here to explore endangered animals from certain regions. With the help of the World Wildlife Fund, we
can take a stand and make a difference in the world. We can make the number of endangered species
decrease. If we stop putting ourselves
over the rest of the environment, the world will begin to thrive again, and we
can all live happily ever after, which makes these little pandas very happy!
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| Courtesy of Pbh2.com |
"Giant
Panda." WWF. WWF Global, n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
"Overview."
Endangered Species International. Endangered Species International Inc.,
2011. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.
"Solutions."
WWF. WWF Global, n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
"World
Wildlife Fund." Charity Navigator. Charity Navigator, n.d. Web. 30
Nov. 2013.
First of all, I really enjoyed your blog post! Pandas are definitely an attention grabber. In my opinion, your persuasive purpose was to inform your audience on panda extinction and to get people to act. In order to successfully accomplish your persuasive purpose, you used ethos, logos, and pathos. You used ethos effectively by establishing your credibility by using credible sources to inform us on this situation. You used logos effectively by presenting us with many facts. Global warming is a highly discussed topic, and sometimes it's hard to know what to believe, but you brought in hard facts from credible sources. You used pathos effectively by appealing to our emotions. You used pathos immediately with your first two sentences. I love pandas, so as soon as I read the second sentence, I was upset. You used scary facts and statistics to instill fear into your audience. You definitely accomplished your persuasive purpose because you informed us about this growing problem, and you gave us solutions to get us to act. My suggestion is to work on establishing your ethos a little bit more. You did well with your sources, but maybe try to connect with the audience more. Overall, I think your post was fantastic! It made me want to help the pandas.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed your blog post. I found the information in this post alarming for the panda population. I feel your purpose for this post was to bring attention to panda endangerment and prompt action. I found your most effective appeals in this article were to logos and pathos. You appeal to pathos well with the picture of the pandas. It’s hard for someone to look at a panda and not smile. This effectively engages the readers’ sense of humility when talking about the issue. Adding on what Rachel said, the use of facts was good. “Only 1600 giant pandas are known to be alive,” and the expenses breakdown add to your logos appeal. By putting an exact number with the pandas allows the reader to understand the severity of the issue from a numbers perspective. I would say you definitely accomplished your persuasive purpose of bring attention to the issue. Your logos and pathos appeal make for effective combination when reading this post. If I had to give you a suggestion, I would say lose the WWE gif, it takes away from the appeal of the pandas. In the end you persuaded me to care more about endangered species and want to donate money.
ReplyDeleteTo start off, I love your title because it rhymes! After reading your post, I noticed that the main rhetorical strategy you used is the pathos appeal. Your first and last pictures illustrate pathos because they show the adorable panda bears that Americans seem to forget they are hurting. Your opening paragraph appeals to your readers' emotions by showing them that they are putting adorable animals, such as pandas, in extreme danger. Throughout your post, you showcase pathos by giving examples like large scale developing activities that are affecting the wildlife's environment. These examples make your readers aware of exactly how they are hurting the pandas. You also use the rhetorical strategy logos. You state factual evidence you found on the World Wildlife Fund's website. These facts and statistics increase your ethos appeal because it shows you have done research. It seems you are arguing on the level of fax because you state facts throughout your post that you found in your sources. Your post is informative and gives the call to action to donate to the World Wildlife Fund. Overall, I thought your post was well-organized and had great information throughout! I loved all your pictures and would not change a thing! Good job!
ReplyDelete