Global Warming Causing Frequent Heat Waves



Summer is just around the corner and one can easily notice that days are now warmer and more humid than last year’s. It is quite impossible nowadays to spend the whole day out at the beach—with or without sunblock!

Climate experts even predicted that hot and humid days will occur frequently and a lot longer this year and, unfortunately for the years to come which will result to life-threatening heat waves. Heat waves are known to earn fatalities over the countries it hit in the past. Aside from that, heat waves put children under 4 years of age and older people 65 years above in a greater health risk—usually fatal.

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Palm Oil Causes Deforestation



Palm oil is heavily in demand these days and the palm oil industry is certainly booming, ensuring good income for many years to come. Palm oil is a major component to common necessities such as shampoos, soaps and candles. And because palm oil is edible oil, it can also be used in foods like chocolates and margarine making it a very lucrative business to many farmers experiencing difficulties in farming.

Due to these ever increasing demands, huge palm oil plantations are replacing large portions of forests in Asian countries particularly in Malaysia, the leading palm oil exporter in the world. These land conversions are certainly taking their toll to the biodiversity within the area, threatening many animals living in these forests to extinction.

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Endangered Birds Got the Beach



Most of us normal, average people would like to have a beach of our own where we can lie down and savor the sun all day. What will make it better than somebody else buying it for you and allowing you to use the beach for free? Apparently, you have to be an endangered species first before you can get someone to buy you a whole stretch of beach to lay egg on.

Meet the Maleo birds, these endangered birds got their own stretch of Indonesian beach to their name, complete with bodyguards to protect their eggs from human scavengers and hungry poachers. Maleo birds are considered endangered since they are very rare. These endangered species are also a native of Indonesia; unfortunately, their eggs have become a popular delicacy around the Sulawesi, an island in Indonesia. This situation had brought down the number of live Maleo birds threatening to extinct them.

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Tasmanian Devils Threatened by Contagious Facial Cancer



The population of the Tasmanian Devil, one of the most famous tourism icons of Australia, is not only valued for shaping the natural landscape but also for acting as a natural buffer in establishing the fox population in Tasmania. That is why the news of a rare kind of facial cancer spreading across this species is an incessant cause of concern for ecologists, naturalists, tourists, and also the Australian government.

Reported first in 1996, the Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD) spread quite rapidly among the Tasmanian Devils, mainly in the eastern parts of Tasmania. The overall prevalence of the condition was reported from 64 places in the state, in end 2008, over 60% of the state’s total area. In high-density populations of the species, there is more than 90% of mortality rate, with most of the affected animals dying in 6 to 18 months after contracting the disease. For the ecologists and conservationists, this situation is no less than an emergency.

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Disposable Plastic Bags Anyone?



Plastic bags are nature’s number one enemy. A regular disposable plastic bag can last up to 1000 years in the face of the Earth and poses a great environmental hazard. Actually, nobody really knows if they indeed dissolve or they just stay that way forever. These bags are made to last a lifetime, they are durable and they will not break into any other form; that unfortunately, puts Mother Earth into a compromising position.

This is exactly why environmentalists move to ban disposable plastic bags from supermarkets and shops in hopes of wiping out plastic bags usage once and for all. Although there have been recycling efforts employed by the government, it seems that it’s never enough as compared to the actual amounts of plastic bags people use everyday. In the end, it will still depend on the choices we make and how we live our lives.

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