Malaysia’s very own supermodel, Amber Chia stripped down almost completely and had her body painted with tiger stripes for PETA’s anti-zoo campaign. She is the first Malaysian celebrity they have roped in to help their cause urging people to boycott zoos.

According to Senior Peta campaigner Ashley Fruno, “Wild animals belong in the wild. An animal who lives a long and healthy life but dies in the wild is not worse off than animals who spend all their lives pacing in enclosures.”

What do you think of the campaign? Should wild animals be kept in the zoo or roam free?

Earth Hour is created by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund) in 2007 and has now become a global annual event. Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses from 35 countries switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008, 50 million people switching off their lights on March 28. Now, Earth Hour 2009 will happen on the same date, March 28 and 80 countries and 1,500 cities are expected to participate.

You too can help to spread the word of the event. Just go to Earth Hour Download page. You can download the banners and widgets to show your support for Earth. Or you can even print your own Earth Hour T-shirts!

Watch the Official Earth Hour 2009 video: -

International World Water Day is an annual event and is held on March 22 every year. Having said that, World Water Day 2009 is today, March 22, 2009 and the theme for World Water Day is "Shared Water – Shared Opportunities".

What can you do to help?

1. Take a shower instead of a bath
2. Turn off the tap while brushing your teeth
3. Wash the car with a sponge and bucket
4. Don’t flush the toilet every time you use it
5. Only use the washing machine with a full load
6. Campaign for World Water Day. Get campaign material here

In-depth reading:
UN-Water Thematic Paper: Transboundary Waters – Sharing Bene?ts, Sharing Responsibilities (PDF)

Google, as usual, changed it logos for the occasion while Yahoo! uses an animated Flash that will turn both it’s “O” into recycle symbols when you mouse over it while a plant will grow besides the letter, “Y” when you mouse over the logo for the first time.

If you realize, besides Google and Yahoo, YouTube has also changed its logo purposely for Earth Day. Seems like more and more web sites are creating awareness for Earth Day this time around.

Today’s Earth Day!

On April 22 each year, millions of people around the world will come together to celebrate Earth Day — a commitment to taking care of our planet, and to fighting climate change.

What will you be doing for Earth Day? Take public transport to work? Start using shopping bags at supermarkets? Wash clothes in cold water?

Tell the world what you’re doing for Earth Day (and beyond) by uploading a message to Google’s Earth Day ‘08 site.

Start to make a difference.

Human Footprint by National Geographic will show you just that. The number of eggs eaten in one’s lifetime is different in the US compared to UK and Japan. Nevertheless, the objectives of Human Footprint is to make you realize when you eat an egg, you’re not just eating an egg. You’re eating the gas the truck used to deliver the egg, the coal used to generate electricity for its refrigeration, and the resources to boil, fry, or poach that yummy egg. And that’s your human footprint — how much of the world you use in your life time.

For example, if you eat 7 eggs in a week, you’ll consume 28,301 eggs in your lifetime. That compared with an average of 27,559 eggs consume by Japan, 19,826 eggs consume by U.S. and 13,345 eggs consume by U.K. averagely in their lifetime.

Human Footprint is available in HD on Comcast Digital Cable this Sunday, April 13 at 9pm ET/PT and is part of the Preserve Our Planet Project. Do your part to make our planet a better place to live.

Hayden received the Gretchen Wyler Award, given annually at the Genesis Awards to a celebrity who brings attention to animal causes. Wyler, who founded the awards and was also an actress, presented the first award to Paul McCartney. She died last May from breast cancer.

Hayden’s parents and her boyfriend and Heroes co-star – Milo Ventimiglia were in the audience and watched a video of the actress and others paddling out on surfboards and confronting fishermen, who trap and kill dolphins to protect their fish supply. They then gave a standing ovation as Hayden took the stage.

Save the cheerleader! And she’ll save the dolphins! Kudos to Claire Bennett!

Love dolphins? Visit Dolphin Bubbles and learn more about dolphins.

Visit www.earthhour.org/ to see how you can make Earth Hour a part of your everyday life and find out ways to reduce your carbon dioxide emissions.

Join the Earth Hour movement now at www.earthhour.org

Check out the video below:

Global Warming is not a fad. It is not a story that somebody just made up. Global Warming is a scientific reality that all humans face. Some of the things we do have a negative impact on our planet. We need to reverse this impact now.

Visit www.warmingsign.org to sign up and get facts on Global Warming.

All you need to do is register your first name, last name and the country you are from. You don’t even need to enter your e-mail address.

Help us spread the word by forwarding this message to your contacts and friends. WarmingSign is even available as a Facebook Application.

The outstanding form-fitting design derives from a full-grain distressed leather upper combined with cupsole fit and a plush Phylon midsole footbed. The Nike Sticky Rubber outsole offers superior traction – suitable for a casual walk or off-road runs. The feature I like best about Nike Considered CVT is the versatile fold-down heel which allows one to go up or down depending on your application and makes the Nike Considered CVT conveniently portable.

Nike Considered CVT Shoes in Black/Flint Grey

Nike Considered CVT Shoes when its fold-down heel is folded down

Nike Considered CVT Shoes is convenient and flexible

I bought mine for MYR 216.30 (approx. USD $64.15) after a 30% discount. The original price is MYR 309.00 (approx. USD $91.64) from Studio R in Suria KLCC.

Commuting by taking public transports is only the first step in making the world greener. However, have you ever pondered even by taking public transports, how one can still go one step further in making the world greener?

By taking public buses, trains, monorails, subways, etc., most commuters usually need to buy tickets which usually come in the form of paper or card. If your city has a million commuters and a quarter of them buy tickets daily, there would be a really big amount of wastage of papers already, nevermind the exact numbers.

So, how to go greener despite taking public transport?

1. Get monthly passes / multi-ride tickets / season tickets.
   Monthly passes not only mean saving the hassles and money, you’ll get to save the environment too as instead of buying a ticket each for every working day in one-calendar month, you only buy one per month.
2. Get an electronic fare card.
   In most major cities in many countries, electronic fare cards are available in many forms.
   In Washington – SmarTrip card, Singapore – EZ-Link card, Malaysia – Touch’n Go card, London – Oyster card, Melbourne – Myki card and so on. Instead of getting monthly passes (which still contributes to environmental wastage), you just need to get an electronic smartcard which you can use over and over again and top up the credit to continue using. Unless, of course, if you are the type who keep losing things.
3. Choose Monorail / Light-Rail Transit over Buses / Trains.
   Buses and trains have very high Carbon dioxide emissions whereas Light rail and Monorail use less energy and generate less carbon dioxide.

Electronic fare cards are available in many different forms – in Europe, through mobile money in your cellphone and in one particular country, you can reload the value in your identity card! Though one can preserve the environment by doing so, you would not want your cellphone and identity card got stolen or lost in the process. For sure.

Kuchofuku has a wide range of products including jackets, pants, white shirts (for both men and women), and workshirts with dual fans that create constant air flow. The bed and the clothing line are suitable for the hot summer.

Check out the bed and clothing.

(Via CScout)

Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent series of 9 concerts taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

Live Earth will reach this worldwide audience through an unprecedented global media architecture covering all media platforms – TV, radio, Internet and wireless channels.

Live Earth will stage concerts at Giants Stadium in New York; Wembley Stadium in London; Aussie Stadium in Sydney; Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro; Maropeng at the Cradle of Humankind in Johannesburg; Makuhari Messe in Tokyo; the Steps of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai; HSH Nordbank Arena in Hamburg; and Inonu Stadium in Istanbul.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Dave Matthews, Madonna, John Mayer, Beatsie Boys, The Police, Linkin Park, Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, Black Eyed Peas, James Blunt, Snow Patrol, Kanye West, Fall Out Boy, Ludacris, Duran Duran are among the artist lineup for this major event.

Not living anywhere nearby the concert venues? No worries, Live Earth concerts will be broadcast to a live worldwide audience by MSN at LiveEarth.MSN.com.

Support the biggest event ever for mother nature. Spread the word!

World Environment Day, commemorated each year on 5 June, is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

The World Environment Day slogan selected for 2007 is Melting Ice – a Hot Topic? In support of International Polar Year, the WED theme selected for 2007 focuses on the effects that climate change is having on polar ecosystems and communities, and the ensuing consequences around the world.

The main international celebrations of the World Environment Day 2007 will be held in Norway. UNEP is honoured that the City of Tromsø will be hosting this United Nations day. Please visit the Norwegian Polar Institute WED website for more information on the celebrations in Norway.

Visit United Nations Environment Programme site for World Environment Day 2007

Amongst the topics expected to be discussed is whether China will lift its successful ban on domestic trade of tiger parts.

Reopening even a limited legal trade would reignite a demand for wild tiger products and spark an open season on tigers in the wild. We need to send a strong, clear and powerful message to the world that this simply cannot happen.

Help End the Tiger Trade

Take action now and help end the tiger trade

Despite international and domestic bans, a thriving black market for tiger skins and bones threatens to wipe out wild tigers. China, with its booming economy, burgeoning human population and ancient traditions of using tiger parts as medicine and clothing, is the world’s leading consumer of tiger products.

The good news is that the Chinese government has taken decisive action to help save the species, outlawing the trade of tiger products and running public awareness campaigns to curb the demand for tiger products.

But there now is a new threat that could put every last wild tiger at risk: the increasing population of captive-bred tigers on so-called “tiger farms”. Investors in these businesses are now pressuring the Chinese government to allow them to sell tiger products.

Reopening even limited legal trade in tiger products from farms would reignite a demand for wild tiger products and spark an open season on tigers in the wild. We need to send a strong, clear and powerful message to the world that this simply cannot happen.

Take action now and add your photo to WWF’s tiger photo mosaic and show your support for tiger conservation.

With your help we can end the tiger trade.

(Via WWF Passport)

Take action now to save bluefin

Over recent years, high-tech fishing fleets have hunted down, often illegally, ever declining numbers of these ocean giants. So much so that bluefin tuna could soon be commercially extinct.

In May, the bluefin tuna fishing season starts again. But rather than acting to stop this tragedy the European Union has set fishing quotas at a level more than twice as high as science recommends. As a result the fishery is likely to collapse.

Send an email to the governments of France, Spain and Italy – the main bluefin fishing countries in Europe – and ask them to take responsibility for their fishing fleets. Ask them to set aside or allocate half of their fishing quotas this year for conservation.

(Via WWF Passport)

Genetic and skin tests on the creature, now dubbed the Bornean clouded leopard, or Neofelis diardi, have shown that it is almost as different from clouded leopards found on the Asian mainland as lions are from tigers, the Swiss-based WWF said.

“For over 100 years we have been looking at this animal and never realised that it was unique,” said Stuart Chapman, coordinator of a WWF programme that aims at preserving the vast rain forests in a region known as the Heart of Borneo.

Read the rest of the story

Take action to now to protect Barrow Island

In December 2006, the Western Australian Government overruled the advice of its own Environmental Protection Authority and approved the development on the island of a huge gas plant by the energy companies, Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil.

Risks to wildlife from the massive project include the introduction of invasive species and diseases in the thousands of tonnes of material and equipment needed to build the plant. The development would also require the construction of a port in a pristine tropical area previously earmarked for inclusion in the surrounding marine park and the dredging of deep shipping channels in coral reef habitat.

Barrow Island is a sanctuary for marsupials like the burrowing bettong (above), the golden bandicoot and many other threatened and endemic species.

You can help protect Barrow Island by signing our petition to the energy consortium (Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil).

Tell them to halt plans to locate the gas plant on the island and instead look to alternative mainland locations.

(Via WWF Passport)

It’s awesome how sometimes, even in the world of prey and predators, the hunters can forget that they’re the hunters and care for something other than their own kinds. It just never stop amaze me how wonderful mother nature can be – like instead of harming others with your superiority, you use the superiority you have to save and protect the others. Awesome.

View the story

But the fish, which swims into the Mediterranean each year to reproduce, is facing a crisis. Prized for sushi in Japan and across the world, the high demand for this valuable fish has led to huge illegal industrial overfishing. This has been fuelled in turn by the massive expansion of tuna farms in the Mediterranean in the last ten years, where wild tuna are caught, put in cages and fattened up for export.

Please sign our petition asking the European Union (EU) to support urgent measures to save tuna – before it is too late.

If this unscrupulous fishing continues the species could be biologically and commercially extinct in a few years.

There is one last chance to save the bluefin tuna. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is meeting this month in Croatia and will decide how to manage the fishery in the Mediterranean over the coming years.

Most of the illegal fishing of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean is by EU fleets – yet Europe’s representative at ICCAT is still resisting a strict recovery plan.

Take action now and sign the e-petition, which WWF will present to the EU representatives at the ICCAT meeting.

(Via WWF Passport)

One of the first European countries to protect the brown bear, Slovenia, now threatens to start one of the biggest hunts of all time and decimate its bear population through an unscientific and unsustainable kill.

Action is urgently needed as the hunting season will reach its peak in only a few weeks time.

Before Slovenia joined the European Union (EU) around 50 bears were killed each year by hunters. But in 2002, the government drastically increased the quota to 100 individuals. However, following international protests and criticism by neighbouring countries and the EU, the quota was reduced in subsequent years.

But now the government has once again announced that it will increase the hunting quota to 100 bears. This is in addition to many that are killed each year on roads and railway lines.

Supporters of the hunt claim that quota needs to be increased because of damage to farming caused by bears and the risk to local communities. But killing more bears is not the answer and jeopardizes existing conservation programmes.

Send an email now to the Slovenia environment minister and urge him to suspend this unsustainably high quota

Urge him instead to work with neighbouring countries to establish a sustainable bear management system in the region that protects the bear as well as the livelihoods of local people.

(Via WWF Passport)

(Via ecofriend)

Only about 500 Ethiopian wolves exist, split among seven populations inhabiting two national parks in Ethiopia’s central highlands, and recognized as an endangered species. Sometimes known as the Abyssinian Wolf or the Simien Fox, the wolves have suffered two devastating rabies epidemics in recent years, one in 1992 and the other in 2003. The early outbreak wiped out nearly three-quarters of the wolves, who are distinguished by long legs, long snouts and red coats with white and black markings. Dining on rodents found in mountain meadows, they live in close-knit packs, mostly in the Bale Mountains.

Learn how you can save them.

Important links:

Nature article: A wolf at Bay
Bale Mountains National Park
WildCRU Wildlife Conservation Research Unit
Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme

(Via USA Today)

Once widespread throughout southern and eastern China, as well as neighbouring Myanmar (Burma) and northern Vietnam, the panda is now restricted to only 20 or so isolated patches of mountain forest in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces in China.

Today this peaceful, bamboo-eating member of the bear family faces a number of threats. Its forest habitat is fragmented and populations are small and isolated from each other.

View the campaign

Take action now

Join WWF in recognizing and supporting China’s efforts in protecting the giant panda.

Sign our petition to say thank you for the achievements to date and for the commitments to reconnect all major panda habitats in the Minshan area.

Your thanks will be personally conveyed to Governor Zhang Zhongwei of the Sichuan provincial government and Governor Lu Hao of the Gansu provincial government.

The trouble is, our oceans are being seriously over fished. So much so, that unless action is taken some of our favourite fish may disappear from the seafood counter and restaurant table altogether.

But it is not just our supper that’s at stake. Unsustainable fishing – caused by poor fisheries management and wasteful, destructive fishing practices – is decimating the world’s fisheries, as well as destroying marine habitats and incidentally killing billions of fish and other marine animals each year.

You can help change this. Consumer demand for sustainable seafood can act as an extremely powerful incentive for better fisheries management. If you buy, or ask for, seafood that comes from sustainable sources you are helping to protect our marine environment and, at the same time, ensuring that seafood can be enjoyed for many years to come.

Take a stand against unsustainable fishing and pledge to buy MSC certified seafood.

Find out more about the unacceptable face of seafood with WWF interactive menu (flash required)

California made a bold move to curb global warming by passing on Thursday the first bill in the United States to cap man-made greenhouse gas emissions, an action state leaders hope will be copied across the country. California is the first state in the country to do so and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the man.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger frustrated by lack of action from fellow Republican President George W.Bush on reducing heat-trapping gases, teamed up with the state’s Democratic majority on the landmark bill.

Watch Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s speech here.

Read the rest of the news here.