The Best Gift You Can Give to Your Children

During the holidays, we encounter wildlife in all “the old familiar places” as the popular song would have it…in department store displays…greeting cards…decorated homes and even a few rooftops. There are polar bears and Santa’s reindeers…penguins…songbirds and so many animals and birds that bring a smile to faces of young and old alike.

But there are many wildlife species that aren’t up-front on the holiday stage, but would benefit from some caring year-end giving by National Wildlife Federation supporters. I’m thinking particularly of grizzly bears and a few other species that need our help right now. If you are looking to add one more gift to your holiday list, then you couldn’t do any better than to add a grizzly to your list. You can be sure that it’s a gift that will pay big dividends for this monarch of the wilderness for many, many holidays to come.

Right now National Wildlife Federation’s wildlife biologist, Sterling Miller, and his colleagues in our Montana field office are working to restore the grizzly bear to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana – a land of mountains, forests and meadows ideally suited for the grizzly bear. The Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness is a huge, remote chunk of land – probably the largest unbroken expanse of wilderness left in the Lower 48. It’s a breath-taking landscape of snow-capped mountains, dense forests, clear-running streams and lush meadows, totaling almost four million acres in all. Studies have indicated that the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness can sustain a population of more than 600 grizzly bears – about the same number found today in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

I have just received a special matching grant from a generous donor who wants to support the innovative plan that Sterling and his associates have developed for the grizzly’s recovery. Basically, it will allow National Wildlife Federation to install safeguards so the grizzlies will not becoming accustomed to foraging out of dumpsters…leading to their ultimate removal and death. Happily they’ll be forced to make their way to the wilderness where they will live and survive.

We have a deadline on this matching grant, so I urge you to “add a grizzly to your holiday giving list” so we can do the right thing for this magnificent species. Think how good you’ll feel knowing that you’ve done your part to protect this magnificent creature so they’ll be there in our children’s future. You might even say adding a grizzly to your list gets a double reward…the grizzly and our children! Please click on the secure link below to make your donation.

Donate Now to Save Grizzlies

Wildlife are an important part of our lives today and a critical element in our children’s future. By protecting wildlife and their habitat today, we will be securing our children’s future by stopping global warming, maintaining ecological integrity of our wild places and by reconnecting people to nature.

The Greatest gift you can give to your children is a healthy planet. Thank you for your support and commitment to the nature of tomorrow. Thanks for caring and have a happy and safe holiday.

Published: December 21, 2006