Last week, RAN’s Rainforest Free Paper team attended BookExpo America, the biggest publishing event in the U.S. An unusual part of the team really stood out from the 20,000+ crowd…a Sumatran tiger named Terra.
Terra traveled all the way to BookExpo to tell the story of her home in Indonesia. Sadly, only 400-500 Sumatran tigers still exist in the wild, and their habitat is being lost at a rapid rate as pulp and paper companies cut down rainforests to provide cheap paper for copy paper, toilet paper, and even children’s books.
Terra spent her days at BookExpo talking to children’s book publishers about what they could do to help prevent her rainforest home from being further destroyed.
Handing out RAN’s latest report on rainforest fiber in children’s books and buttons declaring “I Love Books AND Rainforests,” she made many new friends who posed with Terra for photos and signed a petition to the book industry demanding sustainable paper be used in their children’s books.
Now it’s up to individual publishers to do their part to ensure that Indonesian forest destruction is not in their books. Hopefully no Sumatran tigers will have to attend BookExpo 2011.