Compassionate Creator,

we too often ignore the cries

and suffering of your creatures.

As we acknowledge that one fifth of species

is under threat or endangered with extinction,

we feel tremendous sorrow.

We lament what we have done,

or what we have failed to do.

As we remember that we, too,

are part of your creation,

vulnerable and interdependent,

may we reach out to our fellow creatures

who are struggling for survival.

Creation Justice USA (adapted)

The Palestine mountain gazelle pictured here is now classified as an endangered species. Across Israel it’s legally protected but, with numbers daily diminishing due to poachers, feral dogs and habitat degradation, the future looks bleak. The largest numbers of mountain gazelles remain in the Golan Heights and in Galilee where Jesus would have known them. He would also have encountered them in the dry desert-like conditions of the Judaean wilderness.

This lovely gazelle is just one of a million species which are at risk of extinction. The Blue Whale and the Chimpanzee are on the list too. So is the Asian Elephant and the African Wild Dog. So, nearer to home, are Swallows and Swifts, Song Thrushes and Skylarks. So are Spreading Bellflowers and Meadow Sage… One in five species is under threat.

On this World Wildlife Day, we are helped by today’s prayer to lament the looming loss of such wonders and to stand contrite before our Creator. Behind its words lies a dislocation neatly expressed elsewhere by David Attenborough: “We have moved from being a part of nature to being apart from nature”. Yet thousands of years before, the wise Hebrew author of Ecclesiastes had written about the vast intertwined web of life into which we are woven: “The fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other” (3.19). Today’s prayer rouses us to protect that web of life – before time runs out.