Aston Villa and Wolves are a number of football clubs that removed animals from their crests for World Wildlife Day. Photo by Tim Keeton / PA Images via Getty Images
Premier League societies Aston Villa, West Bromwich Albion and Wolves have removed the animals from their badges to raise awareness for World Wildlife Day, it was announced on Wednesday.
In partnership with the World Wildlife Fund have a number of football clubs, including A league Giants Roma and championship pages Watford, Brentford and Middlesbroughhave tweaked their crests to highlight the increasing loss of wildlife around the world.
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The Lion of Villa, the Wolf of the Wolves and the Throstle of West Brom have been removed for the day, while the Roma will do without their Capitoline Wolf. For the first time in its 60-year history, the WWF removed its legendary panda from its logo.
Wolves, Aston Villa and West Brom have removed the animals from their club badges to highlight the increasing loss of wildlife around the world 🦁🐺🐦 #WorldWildlifeDay pic.twitter.com/4Z23bCtZ4P
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WWF has encouraged businesses and sports teams to ditch their animal logos in order to “highlight the dramatic loss of biodiversity worldwide and the social and economic risks associated with it”.
“We want to show what a world would look like without nature, because in less than 50 years human activity has caused wildlife populations to have fallen by an average of 68% – and with every part of nature we wipe out, we lose one another important link to human and planet health, “said Felicity Glennie Holmes, director of communications and marketing at WWF International.
“Today we’re partnering with some of the world’s most popular brands to remove nature-related images from our logos and show how empty a #WorldWithoutNature would be.
“Globally, we need to reverse our direction and begin restoring nature. And we need governments around the world to take advantage of this year’s opportunities to take action so that we can avert the risk of nature and ours finally disappearing natural world flourishes. “
