save the planet

I filled in the university travel survey today and at the end it gave me my carbon footprint for travelling to uni and how that compares to the average.

My results are 26kg per year compared to 810kg! Not bad.

Well I would like to and visit Japan and everything, but not as long as they keep doing stuff like this :(

http://takeaction.oceana.org/dia/organizationsORG/oceana/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5322&utm_source=20060929_DolphinVideo&utm_medium=email

at Vane Farm nature reserve near Kinross. It was very fun and I met bunny-kins the bunny, foxy-kins the fox and Hans the Swallow. I also painted and dug and pulled ragwort and had lots of fun and saved the birds. YEAH!!! I’m even going back for an evening of more ragwort pulling.

i found a new clicking website that has a lot of my previous clicking sites rolled into one with extras:

http://conservebirdhabitat.com/donation.htm

Also at the bottom there’s a link for www.goodsearch.com which is a search site which gives a donation for every search you do to the charity of your choice. I’ve chosen the sempervirens fund. They need $5.5million by June 20th to buy an old growth redwood forest or it gets the chop!

http://www.sempervirens.org/lompicoheadwtrs.htm

I went to a talk last night at Edinburgh zoo and it was really amazing. It was about cheetahs and their conservation, and was given by Dr Laurie Marker, who set up a centre for studying cheetahs in Namibia. It was so inspirational, she’s such an amazing woman! She used to look after cheetahs in zoos, but eventually realised that no-one was going to do something about saving wild cheetahs, so she did it herself. It’s not just that she decided to do it though, but all the amazing things the centre has accomplished. As well as studying the biology and ecology of cheetahs they do a lot about educating farmers and children that they aren’t as big a threat to livestock as they think. They also teach farmers better agriculture methods so they don’t hit out at cheetahs for farming losses, they raise guarding dogs and donate them to farmers to protect their livestock. They’ve also set up a sort of eco-meat product where farmers who support cheetahs can get premium prices for their beef and a company that turns certain bush plants into environmentlally friendly logs, which creates employment, funding, and improves the land for cheetahs and farmers! I think the way the centre has put together all of these things is a real model for other conservation because it benefits everybody, not just animals and people who like them, and that’s the sort of project that can really change the world.

http://www.cheetah.org.uk/index.html

Today i went with my mum to North Berwick to walk along the beach and pick up litter. Well I picked up the litter and she looked at me funny. Our walk got cut short though because there was a sick gannet stuck in the sand half way along and I wanted to go back and report it so that someone could come and save it. Luckily a local guy came and took it to a woman who sometimes looks after baby ones. Then I rescued a woodlouse from the pavement. My mum says she hopes I amn’t turning into some sort of “crazy buddhist”

So far I am doing well to turn off all the appliances in my room at the plug when I amn’t using them. Now i just have to get my family to do it in the rest of the house which might be harder. Or maybe I should just concentrate on myself instead of harassing them?