The entire goal of Jenni’s Journey is to talk about my passions of conservation, travel, and veganism. I have mentioned throughout my website and in some of my blog posts that these three topics are related, but haven’t gone into depth about how. This blog post explains how I view the interconnections of conservation, travel, and veganism.
How Conservation is related to Veganism
You have a lower carbon footprint
By eating a vegan diet, you are significantly minimizing your carbon footprint (in other words, minimizing your negative impact on the planet via carbon emissions). The animal agriculture industry emits a lot of greenhouse gases, like methane, which are main contributors to climate change. By not eating animal products, you are lessening the demand for these products, and therefore lessening the emissions that cause climate change.
You’re saving water
Animal-based products use a LOT of water. So, by eliminating them in your diet, you are essentially conserving water.
You’re saving habitats
Animal agriculture takes up an immense amount of land. When “farmers” (companies) want to expand or start up, they often will need to encroach into wildlife habitats and deforest them for grazing fields.
You’re promoting more diverse plant crops
With an increasing amount of vegans worldwide, some animal agriculture industries have been struggling while plant-based companies have been doing very well. Part of the reason for them doing so well is that they have a good mission- they want to create healthy and eco-friendly products. With a more diverse plant demand, this can help soil nutrition if crops are rotated and experience these different plants.
You save energy
Forms of animal-based protein requires a lot more energy than growing plants. Animal agriculture requires energy for feeding, electricity at the factory farms, fertilizers (creating more of a demand for fertilizer production) for the animals’ food. A lot of crops grown for the animals that will become food are grown in monocrops, which means there is no crop rotation (instead of switching from soybeans one year to corn the next, only soybeans are grown constantly) and this depletes soil nutrients and will require more fertilizers to be used. Also, most crops grown go straight to animals for their feed. If we instead used this land to grow crops for humans, we would also be alleviating a lot of world hunger.
Movie Recommendations: What the Health, Game Changers, Cowspiracy
Book Recommendations: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
How Conservation is related to Travel:
Travel doesn’t always mean flying somewhere. The cool thing about conservation is that it is EVERYWHERE.
Almost anywhere you want to go, there will be something conservation-related.
Some include zoos, museums, national parks, hikes, science-centers, marine science centers, and more. All of these places are not only fun, but educational. In fact, these places are what got me interested in conservation when I was younger and I want future generations to be able to experience them, too.
Another form of education can be via studying abroad. This is what first comes to my mind when I try to relate conservation to travel because of the amazing experiences I had when I studied wildlife management and conservation in Tanzania in 2019. This was clearly an educational trip, since it was school, but it was also important for immersing myself in an entirely new culture, learning a new language, and traveling to different national parks, ranches, and towns. Even in the smallest towns, I was able to learn about local conservation strategies from the local people themselves.
I made a video of my study abroad experience to show people how fun and beautiful conservation is. Check it out below!
Lastly, eco-tourism is a huge and increasingly popular field. Eco-tourism is simply tourism with an environmental/conservation focus. One common example of this is going on safaris in African countries. It seems like everyone wants to sit in a safari vehicle and look for elephants and take pictures. I mean, I do too- that’s what I did when I studied abroad! Eco-tourism is a way for tourists to get involved without it being “school”. People can also get national park tours and learn about the ecology and history of the park and the wildlife there, people can go on marine-based boat tours to learn about endangered marine life, go whale-watching, scuba diving, snorkeling, and more. What’s important is that getting involved in the outdoors creates connections between you and the environment, and when this happens, you want to protect it as much as you can.
Now that you know how conservation, veganism, and travel are related, you probably understand why I am so passionate about these things that I decided to create a blog about them. I hope you learned something new and will check out more of my conservation, travel, and vegan blog posts.