Reflective Essay

My advocacy is on the conservation protection and animal rights of species of foxes. This is one type of issue that I am also passionate about next to my drawing skills as an aspiring artist, as I am a big lover of animals, not just with drawing and sketching them, but seeing them in person in their natural habitat thriving freely. Let me be clear that I am not as overly passionate as the way PETA or other animal rights groups step it a bit overwhelmingly. I am simply a local New York young woman who sympathizes with those who believe in animal rights and freedom of animal species that are endangered or not. For those who believe in poaching these canids for their fur, taxidermy trophies, and even mistreating them in something horrid of a place such as fur farms, they are inhumane and downright cruel at these actions. As the main rhetoric voice of this advocacy, I aim to be and speak out as the passionate volunteer type for this local slightly underrated advocacy cause. Rhetoric analyst Keith Grant-Davie depicts the immensity and importance of rhetors and their exigences of many causes and how one representative of the said topic isn’t always just the one voice heard and spoken in the “discourse” route. “What is the discourse trying to accomplish? Finally, exigence can be revealed by asking questions at the stasis of policy or procedure. What are the goals of the discourse? How is the audience supposed to react to the discourse? I include objectives as part of the exigence for a discourse because resolving the exigence provides powerful motivation for the rhetor.” With the topic introduced, let’s see why do foxes do make a difference too.

“While foxes have been labeled as pests and enemies of man in many settings, they play an important role in maintaining ecosystem health. A healthy ecosystem exists when there is a balance amongst its constituents. An entire system could collapse following the absence of just one species.” as stated by local Fox Protection International Tavian Campbell, bringing in the valid point that foxes bring about a healthy balance in our local ecosystem. To which how may they do this? By eating invasive rodents, insects, reptiles, and even rabbits. Notice that all have one thing in common: overpopulation. Can you imagine a whole bunch of them without any foxes to help keep the numbers in check? That is a one-way ticket for saying goodbye to significant environmental necessities we need, such as crops that are grown and harvested every day for our natural food resources. “All animals in this world provide some balance to natural systems. Due to the important role fox species play globally, preserving them is crucial to ecosystem survival. If humans wish to continue to benefit from nature’s gifts we must continue to protect ALL of its inhabitants.” once again stated by Tavian Campbell as this provides the main general idea that keeping foxes protected in balance with our natural environment all around as they play a role in keeping numbers in control, shows that we too can help provide in for their safety and conservation if we aim to protect them from grisly cruel fates of inhumane mistreatment and allow them to benefit the positive ecological balance.

For what my poster brings to the table of raising awareness, and providing in slight facts and truth in hindsight of our fox species. The high amount of foxes being in fur farms to be skinned off for and sold off for high-crazed “fur fashion” is abysmal, the mistreatment of them is noticeable if you look at some photos of them behind the cages, looking overfed, in poor health in some as you can barely see the familiar eyes. This is something that truly breaks my heart as I see foxes as my muse for my drawing pieces, and their beautiful trickster spunkiness in these moments of inhumane treatment is cruel. For the visual design of my poster, I wanted to aim for something simplistic, informative, and finally, visually appealing. I illustrated a red fox vixen with a gentle expression and some slight visible scarring that just by looking at her, you can tell she speaks a thousand words of her story of being freed from cruelty. The sunflowers in the background are placed for visual purposes as they represent “freedom”, and that was the perfect choice for me to partake in my poster creation.

The audience this poster is made for is those who support the protection of animal rights, and those who are interested in learning about foxes. That’s the main type of audience I aim to reach out to for awareness of this issue. But in making this poster, while I did include my visual addition to it, which can hook in potential eyes of its cutesy design, I needed to step up my game just a little push further to provide online resources that help access learning facts of foxes and their importance to our ecosystem. I only not included one, but two QR codes for the sites I reviewed closely to help explain my topic further, including the websites of Fox Protection International, and the famous and well-known organization The Humane Society. By providing two websites such as these, I want to raise facts about the fox species, what kind of impacts they leave on the environment, and show that these adorable wily critters have just as much impact, and touch into our hearts as with any other animal. When others look at my poster, I would like them to take a moment to think of “What would happen if these species were gone? What sort of ecological consequences could happen if that were to happen? And what can I do to help conserve their rights to remain less endangered?”. Being a lover of animals like many others who are fascinated by the pure beauty they add to nature, we should take into account that the many fox species in our local community, out in the wild, and even in protection conservational organizations, do make a difference within our world, and without them, some of our important needs in the environment wouldn’t be around at all.

Works Cited:
Gant-Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents – JSTOR HOME.” JSTOR, Spring 1997, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/465644.pdf.

Fox Protection International, Tavian Campbell. (2022, June 14). Ecological Role of Foxes. Fox Protection International. https://foxprotectioninternational.org/ecological-role-of-foxes/