In the past year I flew a few times, and rode buses, trains and cars in order to bring my beats to you, my dear lovely people.

This all is bad mojo for the planet, so it’s again time to offset some of this.

So I paid 50€ to Luonnonperintösäätiö, a non-profit foundation that buys off land for protection in Finland, with the emphasis on old growth forests. While to outsiders Finland may seem like the magical country of old forests and trolls, almost no old forests stand anymore elsewhere than the most northern parts of the country.  In South Finland, less than 0,5% of the forests can be classified as old (150+ years), and only about 5% in the whole country. Here’s a good article about the situation with an English summary by Ilkka Hanski, one of the most (if not the most) respected ecologists of the country.

Also I sent 75$ to The Altai Project, an US based non-profit working under the Earth Island Institute. They do invaluable work in protecting the fragile and unique nature of the magical Altai mountain country.

While this may not be much, it’s still a gesture, and as they say, small streams flow down into big rivers…

The powers against our Mother Earth are strong and relentless, and they will stop at absolutely nothing except the peoples’ unwillingness to let the destruction go on. Just as an example, the location of Khan Altay has now been destroyed completely, and the land around the area is for sale. I had a hard time facing this last winter, my heart just can’t accept the fact that a few powerful individuals can choose to do such things. So, before “the massive tourist potential” of the Altai area is harnessed, there still are possibilities for protecting this unique land. More sad pics from the location are at Dmitry’s blog.