Shoreham College Eco Club have purchased and saved one whole acre of Bolivian Rainforest through the World Land Trust!
In Eco club our main goal is to make this world cleaner and more environmentally safe for humans and animals to live and thrive. Back in October we adopted an Orangutan, we named him “G-Ninj” – but this was just a small first step in our larger plans. Recently we managed to claim our second step. A much bigger step. We have saved one whole precious acre of the Bolivian rainforest which will be conserved for animals, plants and wildlife, as well as the indigenous peoples of the area.
Bolivia has more than 17000 plant species, at least 3000 species of medicinal plants and produces more than 4000 types of potato! Perhaps more importantly, it houses four types of biomes, 32 ecological regions and 199 ecosystems which house more than 2900 animal species and 3000 butterfly species – this makes it incredibly significant to global biodiversity and really important to save and conserve! We recently found out that Bolivia has a law that says that all nature has similar rights to those of humans and we are proud to be helping them deepen their conservation efforts!
Together we have raised the money by turning off our electricity for one hour a night for two weeks and being sponsored. We all were extremely happy and we now want to save as much rainforest as we can, we hope to conserve a second acre before the end of the Summer!
We also plan to adopt a Polar Bear, as we have been learning that their hunting ground is greatly threatened by climate change. Without the ice the polar bear cannot hunt for seals and other “ice” animals under the ice so money raised for the polar bears will address this issue and that in turn will have a big effect on other animals suffering the effects of habitat loss due to climate change.
We are hoping that more and more we will be able to hold larger sponsorship events that more of the College can become involved in, in the meantime, we’ll keep you posted about our progress!
written by members of Eco Club