MyEnviroMind

You're out doing your weekly shop at the supermarket, grabbing the essentials (whilst sneaking in a few luxuries). You've got your organic vegetables, free range eggs and locally sourced milk. Your "environmental folklore", as sustainability strategist Leyla Acaroglu calls it, is buzzing with excitement. ( Click here to see Leyla's insightful TEDTalk which encourages us to re-think what classifies as a 'green' product ). Even at the till, you refuse plastic carrier bags because you're the environmental superhero who remembered their recycled and reusable bags. #winning. But, alas, every hero has their kryptonite. You take the biodiesel bus home, tuck into a vegan sandwich whilst you read this blog post and realise your downfall: Palm Oil. Hidden in around half of all packaged goods in supermarkets, palm oil is probably the most widely used and little known culprit of environmental degradation. It is in detergent and margarine, lipstick and slic...

In 2013, researchers examined the skull of a male orangutan who was killed in a human-wildlife conflict in Northern Sumatra. Oddly, the anatomical structure of the skull differed significantly from those of other orangutans and stimulated intrigue among the scientific community. On 2nd November 2017, a new species of orangutan was declared; the Tapanuli orangutan. Source:  https://redapes.org/projects-partners/socp/tapanuli-orangutans/ Discovered less than a year ago, the Tapanuli orangutan is also the most endangered of all the Great Apes with less than 800 individuals existing in the wild. With threats of deforestation, wildfires and hunting becoming evermore fierce, the future of our cousins looks bleak. The challenges extend further in that the species is endemic - it is only found in this one location in Borneo in the whole world. As a result, ex situ breeding programmes risk doing more harm than good to the 'gene pool' of the orangutans. Not only might this res...