Few people can have failed to hear of climate change and the effect it will have on sea levels, climate patterns and agriculture, but spare a thought for those poor old penguins who are being cheated out of their icy home.

In actuality not all penguins live in icy habitats, although they do all occur in the southern ocean, but nevertheless they all need a hand from conservation minded people. Issues that affect penguins include habitat loss, hunting, entanglement in fishing nets and oiling.

Fortunately there are a number of charities involved in penguin conservation and you can support them through the ever popular method of adoption.

Here is a list of organisations that I found on the internet that offer penguin adoption:

1. World Wildlife Fund - adopt an Emperor penguin from $25.

2.World Wildlife Fund - Adopt a Rockhopper Penguin, from $25.

3. Defenders of Wildlife - Adopt a Penguin and support conservation work, from $25.

4. Seabirds.org - Adopt and name a Magellanic Penguin and help protect its nest burrow, for $49.

5. Falklands Conservation - Adopt a King Penguin on East Falkland, for £25.

6. Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds - Adopt an African Penguin and pay for its treatment and rehabilitation, for R500.

7. Oamaru Blue penguin Colony - Adopt a Little Blue Penguin in New Zealand and help protect its nest, from NZ$40.

8. Penguin Foundation, Phillip Island - Adopt a Little Blue Penguin in Phillip Island, Australia for AS$75.


You can read about more animal adoption schemes here: Adopt Wild Animals.

I have been saying for a long time that one of the best ways to save rainforests is sinply to buy it where possible. The RSPB in conjunction with Birdlife International and Burung Indonesia has a project in operation which protects and restores rainforest in Sumatra. This is a project well worth supporting.

Why protect Rainforest?
Apart from protecting rainforest for its innate value it is home to an enormous number of species; there is more biodiversity in a lowland rainforest than almost anywhere else.

Rainforest has a huge part to play in combating climate change too. Locked in all the plant material is a lot of carbon that if burned would create carbon dioxide, the most famous greenhouse gas. Not only that, but when rainforest is cut down the soils dry out releasing vast amounts of methane - a gas which has a greenhouse effect about 14 times that of carbon dioxide. Protecting rainforest stops this from happening.

Whilst doing some research on the subject I came across the following quote on toiletpaperworld.com

"In the early 1970s, an EPA study for Congress concluded that using one ton of 100% recycled paper saves 4,100 kwh of energy (enough to power the average home for six months) and 7,000 gallons of water. It also keeps more than 60 pounds of pollution out of the air and saves 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space, which is increasingly important as many local landfills near their capacity. Paper industry representatives have actually estimated that one ton of recycled paper saves approximately 17 trees."

I was quite shocked by this, firstly because I couldn't believe that there was a website devoted to toilet paper, but secondly by the size of the environmental benefits of recycled toilet paper.

If this is true then the energy savings alone would be reason enough to use recycled toilet paper, but together with savings on landfill, pollution and water usage then surely recycled toilet paper must be the choice of the environmentalist?

The saving of 17 trees sounds impressive too, but most of these trees would be from plantations which are of low biodiversity, so that is less important than perhaps it sounds. However, some of the pulp for toilet paper (including recycled toilet paper) comes from virgin forests, so any saving is lenghtening the lifetime of these forests.

However, there is the problem of bleaching in the process of making recycled toilet paper!

Still, this article suggests that there are real environmental benfits to using recycled toilet paper, just so long as one realises that using it does not mean that there is no environmental impact: Behind the label: Recycled Toilet Tissue.