You may have heard the cool news today that scientists have found, alive and well on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, some critters believed extinct for eighty years: pygmy tarsiers! And how cool of a place name is "Mount Rorekatimbo"?
You can read more about it HERE (and check out the slide show of odd animals). I just love weird little bug-eyed nocturnal primates, and I love that there are still dense jungled places on the planet for critters to hide from us. I am glad we haven't killed quite everything we had thought we'd killed. Some got away from us!
In other good news, recently, the Malaysian conservation group LEAP is attempting to purchase 222 acres of jungle in Borneo to form a corridor between two orangutan habitats, in an effort to save some of the primates from the palm oil trade that is ravaging the island -- and many other tropical areas. (remember this video I posted a while back?) Well, they're not quite to 50% of the funds needed to buy this land, so if you can contribute anything, that's HERE. A little here, a little there. Tiny drops in the bucket of hoping we can save some species from extinction.And since I'm so linky and worldy today, here's one more. My sister sent me THIS ONE to a series of eight maps that show the world distribution of various things: population, forest loss, schoolgoing for girls, rabies. . . An interesting new way of visualizing our world. Cool to see. And frightful. Map #4 shows the world distribution of "Girls Not At Primary School" and it makes me very glad to be a sponsor, through Children International, of a ten-year-old Bengali girl named Ayantika. India is the world leader in "girls not at school," and Children International is a great way to help girls, one by one, stay in school. Boys too, of course, though there are eight million fewer girls in school in India than boys!
What can you do with $22 a month that is better than keeping a child in school, with clothes to wear, nutritional supplements, and health check-ups?
Gosh. I'm sorry. It really seems like I'm trying to part you from your money lately. Give to this charity! No, this one! It's so overwhelming. I guess it's just SO overwhelming that it's soothing to be able to do something, however small, whether it's helping one child in India, or donating $20 to help save a tract of rainforest for orangutans, or buying some chickens for a family in Africa. And not to neglect local needs, like our own food banks and shelters. Yeah. Overwhelming.
Cheerio!
8 comments:
Laini -- I think the yawning vastness of the need doesn't mean that doing something on an individual basis isn't worth it. I guess on a dark day you could call it a drop in the bucket -- but to the person receiving that "drop," it's very very meaningful. But I know what you mean about the size of being overwhelming at times.
Here's an interesting and maybe cheering fact: I learned recently that hummingbirds -- the smallest species of which is the size of my thumb -- make their nests from fluff and scraps of thread like all birds, but they're built around a core of discarded spider webs! This is so the nest will stretch to accommodate the growing chicks.
Blind peanut-sized hummingbird chicks wearing a nest of spidersilk like a sweater. What an amazing world we live in!
wonderful post Laini! Thank you!
xoxo
What a cute little alien nuskis! And don't give up, don't feel bad for drawing attention to things we should care about. If you can get just one person to do more than feel bad, it'll be worth it.
I also rather pleased about the penguin species just rediscovered, thought to have been extinct for hundreds of years...
I love his little E.T. hands! Great post.
freaky little thing - so ugly its cute.
Shelli
http://faeriality.blogspot.com/
Hello! Despite the fact that we share a state and many blog friends in common, I've never posted here. But Katie from Plot This just let me know that you and I blogged about the same odd thing on the same day! It seems we are of like mind when it comes to cutely ugly big-eyed formerly extinct primates...
Cheers to that!
Christy
Heyyy! I like your blog and Im, like, only 14 so like dugh! I only skimmed (and I know my spelling isnt to great eighther) But I love to write! Its Hard not to. I really like what you said about dreams and how they are real, I think so too. Although my dreams are big and what most people would call fiction, IO always keep that in mind. Thank you,and...I like your hair. hehe.
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