2015 was the year that over 150 Heads of State and Government, like Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama, attended the Paris Climate Summit where negotiations were held and a Climate Change Accord was signed by representatives of 185 nations. Continue reading Political Change & Climate Change
Tag Archives: deforestation
The scars on our land
Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
I read recently that if you added up all of the land in the world that has been cleared for crops it would add up to a piece of land roughly the size of South America.
Masoala National Park
A little while back I posted about the Aceh Protected Forest, a national park in peril and some ways that it might be improved. But there are still a lot of parks in peril out there, one that especially comes to mind is Masoala National Park in Madagascar. Madagascar has lost 85% of it’s forest to slash and burn farming, but it’s also one of the most unique ecosystems on the planet. How can we keep the lemurs leaping through the quickly falling forests of Madagascar? Well I guess you’ll just have to keep reading…
olinguito
Hiding deep in the Andean Cloud Forests of Columbia and Ecuador was the little, brown, arboreal animal that avoided detection until very recently. The olinguito is the first carnivore discovered in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years. For quite some time it was mislabeled in zoo’s and museums as an olingo, which looks fairly similar but tends to be about double the weight, but with a similar body structure. People simply believed it was just a small olingo.
world orangutan day
Happy World Orangutan Day! A day especially for those fuzzy arboreal apes, orangutans! Orangutans are very special apes, they are the only arboreal ape and they are the only ape in found outside of Africa! The name orangutan is derived from the Malay words ‘orang’ and ‘hutan.’ ‘Orang’ means person and ‘hutan’ means forest, giving the orangutan the name person of the forest. These people of the forest are an incredible look into the evolution of humans, with their intelligent eyes and knack for gentle parenting, but unfortunately we are destroying their habitat at an alarming rate. 300 football fields worth of forest are cut down every single day in Indonesia and Malaysia.
aceh rainforest
About a month ago I wrote a post called ‘it’s only 4 million acres‘ about an Indonesian govenor’s plan to open up 4 million acres of conserved rainforest to mining and plantation use on the island of Sumatra. That is the area of one million football fields.
don’t forget about the frogs
Happy Earth Day! How fantastic that we dedicate a whole day to acknowledging all of the damage we do to our planet, it almost makes it seem okay that we ignore it the other 364 days of the year.
it’s only 4 million acres
It is beginning to sound like Indonesia is moving to approve a proposal to un-protect about 4 million acres of pristine rainforest on the island of Sumatra.
the evil in your chocolate
Your chocolate is no good. Not just because its sugary, but because most chocolate contains something called palm oil. In the past twenty years 90% of orangutan habitat has been destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations
Endangered Living 