You can now explore the Amazon, Madagascar, and Sebangau National Forest in Borneo through Google Earth.
On September 25, I wrote about a Google Earth tour (narrated by AL Gore) and new Google Earth tools and layers which help people to look at the possible effects of climate change under three different scenarios. Now, three new tours have been launched that allow the exploration of critical rainforests and real-life success stories.
The tours (embedded below) have a great wealth of information and inspirational stories bound into succinct Google Earth or YouTube videos.
The decimation of the Amazon due to increased logging, mining and road construction is causing vampire bats in Peru to feast more regularly on the blood of humans.
National Geographic has reported that as human population grows and local wildlife numbers decrease because of development throughout the region, vampire bats have no where else to turn but human blood. As a result, outbreaks of rabies are increasing, and it’s killing people in places where its occurrence has previously been rare.
The World Bank approved a loan to the Brazilian government for the improvement of environmental management programs.
Focus areas for the programs are forests, water conservation, and energy efficiency. (Climate change will be addressed with an integrated approach that includes all aspects of the programs.) For example, destruction of the Amazon rainforest causes biodiversity loss and contributes to climate change, so decreasing deforestation protects biodiversity and prevents additional global warming.
A team of researchers in Costa Rica’s Alberto Manuel Brenes Reserve have been searching for plants that might help cure the mosquito-transmitted disease known as malaria. While not a common disease in Costa Rica, the country’s tropical rainforests have a wide diversity of plants that sometimes cannot be found elsewhere in the world– and some of these species might contain medicinal properties to help stop malaria and other diseases. An estimated 1-3 million people die each year from malaria.
More than two decades ago, rock star Sting, and his wife, Trudie Styler, created The Rainforest Foundationand over the last 20 years it has expanded and diversified. There is the New York-based Rainforest Foundation Fund, backed by Sting, which provides funding for three branches - Rainforest Foundation US, Rainforest Foundation Norway, Rainforest Foundation UK (together they directly support projects in more than 20 countries that protect tropical rainforests and the people that live there)…
Every year an area of rainforest the size of England and Wales is cut down. This leaves local people homeless, drives animals and plants to extinction and releases more CO2 emissions (which cause climate change), than all of the world’s planes, trains and automobiles. Tropical deforestation is an issue that affects us all. ~The Rainforest Foundation
Unilever, makers of Dove, has recently released a video aimed at promoting children’s self-esteem by illuminating how the beauty industry targets girl’s body images. The goal of the Dove Self Esteem Fund is to change “the current, narrow definition of beauty.” As much as I agree with this goal, there is a downside. Unilever imports palm oil from Indonesia, where rainforests and tropical peatlands are destroyed.
Editor’s note: Our friends at Eco-Libris are in the business of preserving forests by “offsetting” books. Today, they bring you a profile of another organization involved in forest conservation, and one of that organization’s success stories. This post was originally published on Friday, March 28, 2008.
We bring you from time to time stories and updates from our great planting partners, and today we have a mini-documentary about Honduran farmer Don Cheyo, who grows organic crops and lives sustainably thanks to help from our planting partner, Sustainable Harvest International (SHI).
SHI works in developing countries in Central America - Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, Panama. Central America has lost more than half of its rainforests in the last 50 years, contributing to mass extinctions and global warming. Rainforest destruction also wreaks havoc on local populations who depend on the rainforest for their survival.
SHI helps many farmers like Don Cheyo in nearly 100 struggling communities across Central America to reverse rainforest destruction with sustainable land-use practices that allow them to take control of their environmental and economic destinies. SHI is involved in many activities - from trees planting and restoration and preservation of degraded land to educational programs and community loan funds.
More than two decades ago, rock star Sting, and his wife, Trudie Styler, created 
