1955-12-06 "Anthony Marr says Chinese must help save endangered species"

December 6, 1995, Wed.
Ming Pao Daily News
by Eric Chan
(translated from Chinese)

Anthony Marr says Chinese must help save endangered species

Chinese Canadian environmentalist Anthony Marr has started a campaign to save endangered and threatened species from the Chinese animal parts consumers.

Marr’s BET’R (bear, elephant, tiger & rhino) campaign was started under his own steam in the summer of 1995. . . . He feels that Caucasian environmentalists cannot say what needs to be said to and about the Chinese community without being branded a racist. He believes that this, when dealt with by an environmentalist of Chinese extraction, would be the most effective.

Marr’s activities currently concentrates on public education. So far, he has received invitations from three Vancouver schools (Eric Hamber, Winston Churchill and Maple Grove) whose Chinese student populations range from 70% to 90%. To maximize public impact, these events will be covered by BCTV, CBC and UTV. . . .

In November, Marr met with directors Paul George and Joe Foy of the 25,000-members-strong Western Canada Wilderness Committee, which agreed to embrace the BET’R Campaign, with Marr being retained as BET’R Campaign Director. Among the first things WCWC will do for BET’R will be to publish 80,000-100,000 copies of a 4-page paper on bear conservation. . . .

Marr plans to tour the Chinatowns of North America, including Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, to propagate his conservation message. . . . If all go according to plan, he plans to go straight to Asia after 1997.

Marr was born near Canton, China, and brought up in Hong Kong. Since his arrival in Canada in 1965, he spent many summers working in the bush deep in the BC interior. It was then he bonded with wilderness and wildlife. He has been involved in BC’s environmental movement for almost two decades.