Aston Villa, Wolves, More Remove Animals from Badges for World Wildlife Day

A number of soccer clubs are temporarily removing animals from their badges in conjunction with World Wildlife Day.

English Premier League clubs Aston Villa, Wolverhampton Wanderers, West Bromwich Albion and the Italian Serie A's Roma are among the clubs amending their branding, according to ESPN.

"We want to show what a world without nature would look like," World Wildlife Fund International Executive Director of Communications and Marketing Felicity Glennie Holmes said. "Because in less than 50 years, human activity has resulted in wildlife populations plummeting by an average of 68 percent—and with every part of nature that we extinguish, we lose another important link to human and planetary health." 

In December 2013, the United Nations General Assembly declared March 3 will be World Wildlife Day moving forward. The date coincided with the signing of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1973.

National Geographic's Rachel Fobar wrote in July 2019 that around 5,800 animal species and 30,000 plant species were protected under the CITES agreement.