By now, you may have heard about palm oil: it’s a substance used in many products as a preservative, appearing in everything from foods to bath soaps.
Unfortunately, the way we farm it is rife with environmental and animal abuses. That’s why it’s so disheartening to learn that a brand like “Earth Balance” that produces vegan products and claims to be both environmentally and animal friendly actually uses it in their products.

Palm oil is a vegetable oil made from the fruit of an African oil palm tree and it’s the leading cause of orangutan extinction. That’s because these primates’ habitat is being cleared rapidly to make room for palm oil plantations.

And when their habitat disappears, they are forced into spaces where they come into more conflict with humans and are poached.

Even worse: farmers often set fire to the orangutans’ forest homes, causing whole animal communities to go up in flames.

Just in the past few years, wildlife sanctuaries have seen huge increases in the number of horrifically burnt orangutans needing immediate life-saving care.

But not only are orangutans threatened by palm oil plantations, so is the broader environment. The palm oil tree can only grow in extremely humid conditions, but that’s where tropical forests are that act as a carbon sink for us.

Carbon sinks are important because they absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, and when they’re upended, all of that stored carbon is released — making things that much worse.

So every time another forest is bulldozed to plant palm oil trees, we are inching closer to both devastating climate change and the loss of the entire orangutan species!

Destroyed forest, destroyed habitat

Palm oil is found in somewhere around 50% of western products. While it’s good for individual consumers to try not to buy products with palm oil, that’s not possible for everyone to practice, nor does everyone know how bad it is to support this industry.

Continue reading “Palm oil destroys life” →

This cute kangaroo is endemic to the Huon Peninsula in northeast New Guinea.
A population on Umboi Island was likely introduced by humans.
The Goodfellow tree kangaroo is a medium-sized, short-tailed tree kangaroo.

Unlike the kangaroo we know, the fluffy tree kangaroo doesn’t live on the ground, but rather in the high treetops of the rainforests of Australia and New Guinea.

Females reach a head-body length of 51 to 63 cm, males are in most cases 61 to 66 cm larger.
The tail of the females is 45.5 to 68.5 cm long and the male is 55.5 to 62 cm long.
The weight of the animals is between 7 and 10.5 kg.

The fur is dense and rich in contrast. The basic color is brown, throat, chest, forearms and lower legs, the insides of arms and legs, hands and feet, the tail, the muzzle, and the ears are light yellowish.

They have bear-like claws so that they can hold on to the trees. The fur colors also vary depending on the species. There are tree kangaroos with black, gray or gray-brown, red or even white fur.
The animals are solitary, not easy to meet, and inhabit relatively extensive territories, usually over 120 hectares in size.
Overlaps with the territories of other animals of the same sex occur.

Goodfellow tree kangaroos feed primarily on leaves of trees, shrubs, ferns, orchids, and herbs.

Fruits and flowers are also eaten, but makeup only a small part of the diet.

The sexes lead a solitary way of life and only meet briefly to mate. The females have a well-developed pouch that opens upwards.
Inside the bag, there are four teats for suckling the offspring.
After a gestation period of 30 to 40 days, the female gives birth to one or two young animals that are only two centimeters long and weigh one to two grams.

The birth takes place in a sitting position. The little developed young animals are in the embryonic stage at birth and crawl independently from the birth canal into the pouch and suck on one of the teats. The young remain in the bag for about six months before they lookout for the first time.
The kittens leave the pouch for the first time at eight months, but keep returning to the pouch. By the age of ten to twelve months, they are weaned and independent.

The Goodfellow tree kangaroo is unfortunately threatened because of the heavy hunting of the animals by the local population and the clearing of the forests and is listed as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List.

The total range of the species is less than 14,000 km² and the total number of fully grown individuals is estimated at only 2500 specimens.
The last retreat points are now only in a few reserves in the highland rainforests.

However, it is only a matter of time before these forests will also fall victim to the chainsaws of the wood industry. Goodfellow tree kangaroos are an easy target for poachers, as the animals move slowly and can hardly escape.

http://www.tierdoku.com/index.php

And I mean…We are just a somewhat advanced breed of monkeys who have made themselves the only living being with rights through the right to vote, and who can decide about the (hardly existing) rights of animals.
So this brood of monkeys, human species, is no better in any way, but it just took that right away.

One of the worst injustices on the planet is that the human species is getting more and more and the animal species is getting less and less

My best regards to all, Venus