The word for animal is Dou Butsu. The two kanji taken literally mean, move-thing. Animals are organisms which move.
As a practical matter, animals can be said to fall into two broad categories. A small category and a much larger category.

Hitsuyou na DouButsu

There are the Hitsuyou na DouButsu.

Hitsuyou no nai Doubutsu.

There are the Hitsuyou no nai Doubutsu.

DouButsu...

DouButsu, animals, are a popular subject for graphic images. There may be as many as seven or eight hundred images here for our viewers. We encourage all users who have images of animals to have them displayed. Images of the more pulchritudinous photogenic species are prefered. But, even images of ugly species of organisms you may have will be appreciated by everyone. We would particularly like to hear from professional botanists, icthyologists, ornithologists, entomologists, marine biologists, ecologists and paleobiologists. People seem interested in images of species which will soon become mere specimens in the shrinking national park zoos around the world. Impending doom gives these organisms a fleeting notoriety which seems to increase their popularity.

Buddha's Message

"In one of the oldest sutras, Suttanipata, the Buddha preached that, "The more comfortable our life becomes, the more convenient our life becomes, the more time passes, -- the more the human heart becomes cold in inverse proportion."

"Today, most of the people in the advanced countries are enjoying a level of material wealth and prosperity unprecedented in human history. However, it is also true that without realizing the difference between materials of happiness and happiness itself, people today have become intoxicated with superficial affluence, allowing their spiritual existence to degenerate."

"Self-centered philosophies tend to see the self as absolute, and this has become the fundamental cause that has created global problems in the 20th century."

"I firmly believe that for this irreplaceable earth to survive in the 21st century, there is no other way but to follow the Buddhist teaching of coexistence and symbiosis. And in order to repay Buddha's benevolence, I intend to spare no effort to convey this teaching of peace and equality to the whole world."

Toshihide Numata, Chairperson, Bukkyou Dendou Kyoukai.

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The title is misleading. Biodiversity has already been horribly damaged. But this book is in a class by itself. It gives a thorough big picture account of the ecological crisis. Its emphasis is ecology, biodiversity, and science. Jonathan Weiner, 1990.

Biodiversity Buddies.

Most humans and especially Americans know in exquisite detail what has been happening and are inured to it. Complacency rules.
We don't like what's been going on for the last couple of centuries. Habitat destruction on a massive scale and increasing day by day. 135 species shoved into extinction each and every day. It's unnecessary. It's dumb. It's wrong. It's evil.