Forest Friends Yangki und Hanna

yangki Hi Hanna and Forest Friends Fans. While I was in Changi Airport in Singapore, I've been to the jungle and I met with White Tiger here. Changi Airport is a great airport and also care about environment. I found a small jungle here with some koi and tropical plant and this white tiger.

yangki Hi Hanna and Forest Friends Fans. Today (Sep 1, 2010) I'm leaving to Amherst, MA to participate in Study of the United States Institute (SUSI) Program on Energy and Environment. It's a five week courses and also some study tour to Arizona (Grand Canyon), DC, Boston, New York and Connecticut. I will have more than 24 hour flight excluding transit time. I will try to post about my activities during this program because this is going to be an interesting program.

yangki Hey Hanna. My university published The 2nd Global Young Greens (GYG) Congress report and available here http://www.unpad.ac.id/archives/34475 and also a paragraph about Forest Friends. But it's in Indonesian language and our picture with Astrid.

yangki In the end of the 2nd Global Young Greens (GYG) Congress, we plant trees in Tegel, Berlin, Germany. I was with another 6 delegates (Finland, Poland, Netherlands, India, Germany, Brazil) in group 3 and we named our maple trees Konsensus. Here's picture when we hold Konsensus.

yangki Here's another one reason why we should keep Borneo Forest in Kalimantan. Smallest frog in Asia discovered in Borneo. I got this information from Urias Goll, a friend from World Biodiversity mailing list. When I searched on internet, I found BBC News link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11095728 Researchers on an expedition in Borneo have found a new and very tiny species of frog. Male adults of the new species, named Microhyla nepenthicola, grow to approximately one centimetre in length. Here's the picture from this smallest frog. Credit AFP

HannaS This blog will continue after 31st August, but it will not be possible to become a fab anymore. Nevertheless, I think we will post interesting things about forests from time to time and it would be great if a lot of people participated. There are still many things to learn and to experience about Indonesia and forests...

HannaS Guten Tag everybody :) Aas Forest Friends Competition ends on 31st August, it is time to say thank you to some people. First of all, I want to thank you, Yangki, for your great work for this blog. I had the luck to meet you personally and I got to know a very engaged and active person. I hope to meet you again and I also hope we can keep up the connection to do something for environment protection. Then, of course, I want to thank all our fans and readers. Each of you now is a symbol for 10 new planted trees - I hope you also got informed a bit about the problems that Indonesian forests face nowadays. And last, I want to thank the WWF that made this project possible. We visited the WWF Office, experienced great support and saw very professional work. Everybody supporting WWF does a good work for environment.

yangki Hi Hanna and Forest Friends Fans. Here's the latest press release from WWF about Forest Friends Competition. I found it in WWF website http://www.wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/tigers/news_pubs/?194549 and also in Save Sumatra website http://www.savesumatra.org/index.php/newspublications/pressdetail/24 stated that 60,000 trees will be plant for critical Sumatran tiger’s habitat after the huge success regarding Forest Friends Competition. A joint project between WWF Germany and WWF Indonesia, I met Hanna for the first time after working in a team-blog for more than two months. Then we had a chance to meet with Forest Friends Program Manager (Astrid from WWF-Germany) during my participation in GYG Congress in Berlin and I also met with Annisa Ruzuar (WWF Indonesia) and other two Indonesian Finalist (Rima and Mia). For me, this is really a good experience working with Hanna, we use English as our official language. Instead of I've learned German for more than one year, I should improve my German. I have new friends in WWF-Jugend Community and sometimes I mixed English with German to talk with them. What a wonderful experience for me personally. I really enjoyed this program and I though Hanna also felt the same. I wish I can speak to Hanna in German Language next time when we meet each other again in the near future.

yangki In Java, Indonesia each newlywed couple is to give whoever is sermoning their wedding 5 seedlings to combat global warming. Each couple that wishes to have a divorce has to give 25 seedlings to whoever divorces them. (Wikipedia). Photo from yourforestmanaged.com

HannaS The article also deals with the problem that orang utans are often hunted by workers on palm plantages - they lose their natural living habitats, so they search for food on the palm plantages. Often they are detectedand killed - nowadays, only about 50 000 orang utans exist. Also native inhabitants like the "Dayak" lose their living basis. Often they are forced to work for the palm oil industry, because otherwise they would starve. Big companies like Sinar Mas do not care about environment or human rights. Due to the article, Sinar Mas has planted oil palms on 400 000 hectar so far, and there is a plan to plant more on 1,3 million hectar. Unbelievable what power big companies seem to have. But: there was some success. Some important purchaser of Sinar Mas, like Nestlé or Unilever, do not buy palm oil of Sinar Mas anymore because of massive protests by Greenpeace. A sign that something can be done against such comnpanies who act like there was no tomorrow... Source: NEON

HannaS Hi everybody. Yesterday I detected an article in a popular German magazine - it is called "the catastrophe of oil" and deals with the problem of palm oil. It says that every hour an area like 300 soccer fields of rain forest is destroyed. According to the article, palm oil is in al lot of products you use daily -for example nivea creme, margarine, shampoo, nutella, kellogs, cosmetica or candles. A main problem is that in the EU fuel must include plant oil. I wrote about that already - this leads to an exploding need for palm oil.

yangki Hanna also do "tree hug". Here's her picture from our time in Tiergarten.

yangki While in Berlin, we went to Tiergarten. That's a big "forest" in the middle of the city. I think there's no such of this "forest" in the middle of the city in Indonesia. We do a "tree hug" there. Here's my picture.

HannaS A link with further informations belonging shrimp farms and mangrove forest cutting: http://www.greenpeace.de/themen/meere/fischerei/artikel/shrimps_delikatesse_im_norden_zerstoerung_im_sueden/#abschnittMangrovenkahlschlag

HannaS Good morning everybody. Yesterday I read the news that scientists made a sad detection: Mangrove forests areas are 12% smaller than guessed so far. Now ca. 137.000 qkm exist - between 1980 and 2000 35% of mangrove forests were destroyed. For coastal areas it is mad that mangrove forests vanish because they are a natural protection against tsunamis and hurricanes... One reason for the destruction is shrimp farming... So everybody should take care and either not eat shrimps or look where the shrimps come from.

HannaS Hi Yangki, how are you? Is the congress successful? I was in Aurich at the weekend and I made a small video where we try your sweet :) Enjoy...

yangki Hi Hanna and Forest Friends Fans. This is the last videos from Jens and Dimitra and they "hire" me to play in this video. A world before prep team. Here's the link.

HannaS This is a small video with Yangki and me in front of the Brandenburger Tor after our meeting with Astrid from WWF - we got to know a lot of interesting things and people there, more about that later.

HannaS This is Yangki´s present for me - Indonesian sweets, chocolate and a cute tiger from "program donasi harimau sumatera"- a campaign for the protection of the Sumatran tiger. BIG THANKS, I already tried the chocolate - it tastes interesting, not ordinary. Next time I meet you, I´ll give something to you :)

HannaS Here´s my first foto of our meeting yesterday. It was a wonderful day and I´ll upload some more pictures later ;)