Money matters the most to our human civilization! It is the only factor that has made so many species extinct or endangered in Earth. Poaching for money, clearing forests for money driven factors are the main reasons for depletion of wildlife in our beautiful planet. But if human can extract the money from any wild species without harming them, then it will open a new horizon in the movement of saving wildlife. Such an inspirational story is slowly coming into focus from our very own Elephants. And to be precise its the Elephant Dung that making way for Industrial prospects in the South East Asia region! The industrial product from the true waste of this largest land mammal is ‘PAPER’. Unbelievable? But its quiet true!

Asiatic Elephant - courtesy nationalgeographic.com (Tim Laman)

The story of  this innovation starts in different countries in different contexts accidentally. In Thailand, the man behind the Elephant dung paper is Mr. Wanchai. On his way home from work he used to pass a natural paper factory and was impressed at the simplicity of the process that used natural tree fibers to make high quality hand made paper. He then took a trip to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang Northern Thailand and saw piles and piles of dung. He looked at the dung and noticed that the dung was very fibrous. This was the birth of the idea.

In India, the Elephant Dung paper, named as “Haathi Chaap” was started in 2003 Mahima Mehra, a psychology graduate and Jaipur-based handmade paper producer, Vijendra Shekhawat. “I and Vijendra were walking up to Amer Fort when the idea of making paper came to me as I saw mounds of elephant waste every few steps. It also has a lot of fibre which is main element of paper making,” says Mahima Mehra. Srilanka and Nepal also are also producing such papers, but the techniques are indigenous and different in each countries.

Elephant Dung - Now Opening new industrial prospects

Elephants apparently have a bad digestive system, which makes their dung highly fibrous. Elephants normally eat 200-300 kgs of plants and excrete more than 50% percent of it. 500 sheets of thin paper can be made out of 15kg of elephant dung. So it can be imagined how much productive is Elephant in Paper Industry!

All handmade paper is made using a fibrous material, and is boiled and beaten to make the fibre pulp. With elephant dung paper, the elephant has done the pulping for us, leaving us to collect the dung, clean it by boiling and steaming so all bacteria are killed, then putting the pulp in a shallow mold as usual. The coarseness of the paper is entirely dependent on the elephants diet, again making no two sheets identical.

These elephant dung papers are already getting popularity and are exported to various western countries. As Elephants are becoming money machines, keeping them alive is also becoming important. Hope this will save lives of many wild elephants along with many trees that are cut down for paper production.

The most known household amphibian may very soon disappear from earth. Sounds unbelievable, but it is likely to occur soon if we don’t take some immediate action.  This amphibian extinction crisis is supposed to be the worst species conservation challenge in the history of humanity. The extinction is not about only one or two species, but about a complete class of animals, thousands of species!  It can be compared to extinction of dinosaurs only.

Infected Frog – courtesy brian.gratwicke @flickr

The main threat of this crisis is not any of the general threats like shrinking of habitat, global warming, pollution, killing of the species, etc. , but a parasitic chytrid fungus –Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. It is believed that the fungus started spreading around the world many decades ago, but unfortunately it was discovered only in ’90s. In last 30 years or so, the fungus has swept away more than 150 species of amphibians, mostly frogs.  Another 2000 species are already on the verse of extinction due to the same infection. It is said to be the worst infectious disease ever recorded among vertebrates in terms of the number of species impacted, and it’s propensity to drive them to extinction. The fungus infects cells of the outer skin layers of the amphibians that contain large amounts of a protein called “keratin”. The fungus feeds on this Kertain. Researchers aren’t yet sure of exactly how the fungus kills the frogs.

The most shocking thing in this process is that Human race will have to bear another blame on their shoulders for the mass extinction.  Its only humans who spread the fungus across all continents. Scientists believe that this fungus came from African clawed frogs that are actually immune to this fungus infection, one of the few amphibians resistant to the Chytric fungus. These frogs have spread far beyond their native habitat, carrying the fungus with them, due to global trade. Scientists around the world have used these frogs for research and, from the 1930s to the 50s, to conduct pregnancy tests.

There are many efforts amongst the researchers to save the amphibians from mass extinction. The most powerful among them is Amphibian Ark project powered by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), theIUCN/SSC Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG), and the IUCN/SSC Amphibian Specialist Group (ASG).

“Nature evolves” and “Technology advances”. When we say nature, we mean our whole planet, various organisms living in it, the sky, stars and so on. But if we look closely, Nature is nothing but an advanced technology, and each of those mentioned above are nature’s product. Nature runs on an extremely advanced technology that is out of human reach and understanding till now.

The product life cycle of nature such huge, ranging millions of years, that human can’t imagine to ever develop that technology. Human used the natural technology, tried to learn from it and developed their own technology. As normal human nature, they always intend to create techniques to achieve something in a fast and faster rate. So our technology is very attractive and produces products instantly. We use nature’s technology to tame nature itself.

Blend of pure nature with human technology - Irrigation used by some tribe

We have defeated nature and tamed it to some extend to fulfill our needs and luxury with our technology. So is our technology more advanced than nature’s? The simple answer is NO.

Recently we have realized how human technology is destroying the nature.Our technology is polluting the nature, in turn which is harmful to the human race. This realization is only partly true, because we may think we are destroying nature, but in reality, the nature’s technology is too robust. We may change the environment in the planet, but nature will still be evolving in its own way. Nature is highly adaptible it will take its own path. May be our whole human race and technology will be taken to an end by nature while changing the path.

We have imaginations of settling down in outer space in a different environment after a complete destroy of earth. But actually are we advancing that fast? Are we not producing destructive technologies in a much faster rate than such advancement? We will only realize our mistake in a natural way if we bring ourselves closer to the nature but not to the human technology.

Are you ready to send  a powerful message on the strength of individual action to tackle climate change?

The Earth Hour is an awareness program organized by WWF every year on the last Saturday of March. It was first started in in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. A year later in 2008, it became a world-wide event with participation of more than 50 million people.

In 2009, global landmarks that switched off in support included the Sphinx and Pyramids at Giza, Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Qutub Minar and Red Fort in India.

Earth Hour 2010 takes place on Saturday 27 March at 8.30 pm- 9:30 pm local time and is a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community throughout the world. It is a call to stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way towards a sustainable future. Iconic buildings and landmarks from India to Australia to America will stand in darkness. People across the world from all walks of life will turn off their lights and join together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet.

The Earth Hour ‘60′ logo represents the 60 minutes of Earth Hour where we focus on the impact we are having on our planet and take positive action to address the environmental issues we face.

Are you ready for this event?