Bornean and Sumatran orangutans face a lethal cocktail of threats that could drive them to extinction: Habitat loss caused by forest-clearing paper and palm companies; potential kidnapping by poachers in the exotic pet trade; and isolation. But you can help.
Tags: · Borneo, endangered species, habitat threat, Nature in Danger, orangutans, palm oil, palm plantations, palm trade, paper plantation, Sumatra
Tigers, extinct? It’s not only possible, it’s likely, especially in the many nations that have yet to take action on behalf of this majestic animal.
A tiger with trap marks (Photo: Chris R. Shepherd, IUCN)
Tags: · Asian species at risk, Bronx Zoo, conservation, extinction, IUCN, orangutans, palm oil, poaching, rhinos, tigers, WCS
From Green Right Now Reports
Earth Day is fast approaching, but it’s not too late for kids in grades K-6 to enter a contest aimed at raising awareness about the loss of rainforests.
The contest by the Rainforest Action Network comes with a teaching module about Tiki the Tiger, who’s losing his home to rainforest destruction, as [...]
Tags: · greenrightnow.com, lumber, palm oil, Rainforest Action Network, rainforest destruction, Tiki the Tiger
They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum. And they charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see ‘em.
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Joni Mitchell predicted it would come to this. But she had the admission price wrong. Instead of a dollar and a half to get into the tree museum, it will be $15 for adults to visit the tree exhibit opening today in Philadelphia. The interactive Exploring Trees Inside and Out exhibit will debut at Philly’s Please Touch Museum where kids and adults will be able to explore trees and how they help our environment.
The 2,500-foot exhibit, sponsored by Doubletree Hotels and the Arbor Day Foundation, has already been to six other museums and will travel to other locales in 2010 and 2011 (including Los Angeles and Chicago), spreading its message that trees are helpful and fun, and showing kids how they work. Children visiting the exhibit are able to crawl up through the middle of a manufactured tree trunk to see how the plant sustains itself. They can plant a “seed” and watch a simulation of a tree growing, and they can hear the sounds of the animals that live in the forest. Wee folk also can “become” a creature in the woods and “fly” over the tree tops, using the wonders of technology.
Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, deforestation, Exploring Trees Inside and Out, Malaysia, palm oil, Please Touch Museum, rainforest, tropical forest
From Green Right Now Reports
Rainforest Action Network unfurls protest banner at General Mills (Photo: Mercury Miller, RAN)
The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) launched the first fusillade today in a campaign to expose General Mills’ extensive use of palm oil in dozens of packaged products.
More than 40 activists with Rainforest Action Network, Walker Church and other community organizations unfurled a 30 x 70 ft. banner in the snow outside the company’s Minneapolis headquarters. It read: “Warning: General Mills Destroys Rainforests”.
Tags: · General Mills, palm oil, palm oil in foods, protest against General Mills, Rainforest Action Network, rainforest destruction
By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now
It’s The Year of Living Dangerously all over again.
Orangutan (Photo: Tom Theodore/Dreamstime)
On Tuesday, two journalists were arrested in Sumatra while covering a politically sensitive topic – palm oil harvesting and the ensuing decimation of Southeast Asia’s old-growth, carbon-capturing rainforests, and the subsequent release of giant CO2 pockets that lie beneath the forests and their peat swamps.
More disturbing than the reporters’ deportation, though, is how little we consumers seem to realize that, not only are we what we eat, but when it comes to palm oil, we are eating our own lifeblood. We’re ‘eating’ our oxygen, we’re ‘eating’ our fellow species. We’re consuming our own future by driving up carbon emissions much faster than we can offset them. We are the snake eating its own tail.
Tags: · Carbon Emissions, carbon pollution, deforestation, Indonesian third largest carbon polluter, orangutans, packaged foods, palm oil, palm planatations, Rainforest Action Network, Rainforest Alliance, Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, RSPO, Southeast Asia, tropical rainforest
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
We had a chocolate attack at a store the other day, so we schlepped over to the cookie aisle seeking something sweet and crunchy.
Palm oil products (Image: PalmOilAction.org.)
Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, orangutans, palm oil, products with palm oil, rainforest, Rainforest Action Network, Southeast Asia, stickering products with palm oil
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Digging into the palm oil debate, an urgent issue to many environmental groups, our reporter Ashley Phillips found herself slipping into a swamp of material.
For years, there has been a volley of claims and counter claims about the environmental and humanitarian consequences related to palm oil production.
The UN Environment Programme has blamed the massive destruction of rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia for producing such a volume of manmade greenhouse gas emissions that it ranks behind only the US and China. These gases are released as the native rainforest is cleared to install or expand palm plantations, and it is exacerbated by the slash-and-burn clearing that is a double whammy to the atmosphere — removing carbon-holding rainforest while spewing carbon from massive wood fires.
Seemingly the only thing happening faster than the destruction of the rainforest in Southeast Asia is the consumer demand for palm oil which turns up in every 10th product at the grocery by some estimations.
Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, Borneo, consumer goods, deforestation, Indonesia, Malaysia, palm oil, palm oil products, rainforest, The Problem with Palm Oil, the Rainforest Network
By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now
Palm Oil, an ingredient found in most processed food, has been the subject of much environmental debate in recent years over its role in deforestation. It is commonly found in cooking oil and as an ingredient in cosmetics, soaps, detergents, and some plastics. Palm oil also has been considered for use in the production of biodiesel.
There have been many attempts to make palm oil sustainable. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was even established in 2003 to do just that. Unfortunately, six years later, there is still no system that can effectively trace palm oil beyond the processor to the plantation level. Companies that manufacture products using palm oil have little way of knowing where the controversial substance originated — which leaves the question of whether and to what degree palm oil is sustainably farmed up in the air.
Tags: · Advertising Standards Authority, Borneo, Carbon Emissions, deforestation, Friends of the Earth, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Malaysia, Malaysian Palm Oil Council, orangutan, palm oil, palm tree plantations, Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil, Sumatra, tropical rainforest, United National Environment Programme, World Wildlife Fund
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Don’t know if it’s the financial crisis, the change of seasons or just the usual grumpiness over the incessant despoiling of the mothership, but the green agitators seem especially edgy lately.
Reuters reported Monday that Greenpeace had blockaded palm oil ships leaving an Indonesian port bound for China and Europe. Their point: harvesting palm oil in that region is destroying rainforests and wildlife and contributing to greenhouse gases (remember those warm climate forests are especially valuable carbon sinks).
The activists were reportedly bobbing in rubber boats out in front of the palm oil ships and one Greenpeacer was seen jumping aboard the anchor of a ship, where he or she presumably clung for dear life.
Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, coal, Greenpeace, Kimberly-Clark, palm oil, recycled tissues
Barbara Kessler
Andrew Winston
Danielle Nierenberg
Anthony Swift