Save Species by Celebrating Spooky Season
Join our #EndangeredCostume showcase to spread the word about protecting life on Earth.
Still looking for a Halloween costume for yourself, kids or pets? We’ve got a suggestion: Dress up as an endangered species — and join us on social media to share your costume and its inspiration.
Below you’ll find tips on where to gather materials and how to create costumes, as well as photos of costumes the Center for Biological Diversity has used in the past and some reasons why we think costumes are an awesome way to grow the movement for saving life on Earth.
Why an Endangered Species?
Dressing up as an animal is always a popular Halloween activity, especially for lovers of the wild. But we have a challenge for you: Add some flair to your holiday get-up that gets people considering species on the brink.
As the human-driven mass extinction crisis rages on, more than a million species could wink out of existence in just a few decades. But within this dire reality, hope glimmers. Because we can stop extinction if we want to. We know what’s driving it, and we know what to do about it.
What’s missing is a widespread, deep awareness and a matching determination to halt the extinction crisis. So many factors conspire to suppress awareness: the entropy of business as usual. Powerful anti-conservation lobbies like Big Oil and Big Ag. And the fact that most extinctions are invisible.
It’s hard to care about what you can’t see. But we need people to care. And that’s where your costume comes in.
Using Animal Characters to Raise Awareness
Changing hearts and minds is as important to stopping extinctions as the lawsuits and scientific research the Center does to save endangered species. One way we’ve done that — since day one — is through costume.
Over the years, some of our costumes have been eerily lifelike, while others were made simply from cardboard and paint.
As our Creative Director Mike Stark put it, “Costume not only honors species but also elevates them into our own consciousness and closes the distance between the animal kingdom and us.”
The Center has a long history of deploying costumes in our creative activism, most famously with Frostpaw the Polar Bear, who has attended climate talks in Copenhagen, appeared on national TV, showed up at presidential motorcades, and traveled to Hawaii to urge President Obama to halt the Keystone XL pipeline.
Our newest animal character is an endangered borderlands jaguar named Libertad, who went to the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year to protest barricades installed by the Arizona governor.
We’ve also donned monarch wings and dressed up as bluefin tunas and dugongs (marine mammals related to manatees).
We invite you to join the Center’s tradition of raising awareness about extinction by dressing up as an endangered species this Halloween and having conversations with your friends, family, and random party-goers about extinction. We guarantee that you’ll open some eyes and change some hearts.
Most people are horrified at the prospect of extinctions but aren’t aware of just how many species are at risk.
Costume Ideas
The mass extinction is so far progressed at this point that, unfortunately, almost every part of the world is home to vanishing species. So which species to dress up as? We have some suggestions.
· Help your community better understand the cost of extinction where you live. Check our extinction map to find a species near you, learn what’s driving its extinction, and dress up as that animal or plant.
· Choose a well-known and much-loved species that’s also imperiled to help others understand the threats species face. For example, everyone loves elephants, but not everyone knows that forest elephant populations in Africa were found to have declined by more than 80% in less than 100 years.
· Wear a wolf or grizzly costume to let people know that these beloved apex predators are still on the brink. Tell people you’re repping a particular imperiled population, like red wolves of the Southeast or the grizzlies of Cabinet-Yaak and explain recent efforts to protect them.
· Want to create opportunities to talk about the Center for Biological Diversity and our unique work to save even the tiniest of species? Dress up as one of these four bee species and let your friends and fam know that we’ve just launched a lawsuit to save them under the Endangered Species Act. (Here’s a video of the blue calamintha for inspiration.)
· Were you inspired by this year’s orca uprising memes? Dress up as this species that made a lot of appearances on social media to let folks know how several populations of these absolutely amazing animals are at risk.
· Last but not least, browse our species pages to learn about animals and plants we work for. There are so many wonderful species that need more lifesaving love — and your costume can help them get it.
Sustainability First
As you craft your costumes, remember to stay sustainable. There are a lot of great how-to guides for animal costumes that can help. Here’s a list of 30-plus DIY tips to get you started. And here’s a state-by-state list of more than 100 reuse stores for supplies you don’t have at home or can’t get for free.
Join us on Social Media Around Halloween
Last but not least, share your costume on Facebook or Instagram surrounding Oct. 31 with the hashtag #EndangeredCostume. We’ll be looking for your posts and resharing endangered species costumes with our followers.
We hope you’ll join us this spooky season in saving life on Earth. Questions? Don’t hesitate to contact us on any of our socials or at bioactivist@biologicaldiversity.org.
