Global eco-friendly beaches

Mother Nature Network has a slide show of eight eco-friendly beaches around the world.

Among the beaches are:

Whitehaven Beach, Whitsundays Island, Australia (picture): won the award for "Cleanest beach in Queensland."

Koh Libong, Trang Province, Thailand

Las Islas Cies, Galicia, Spain

See the slide show: 8 of the greatest eco-friendly beaches in the world

Photo from Tourism Whitsundays

Thai zoo panda gives birth

Ecotravel News was pleased to hear that the female panda from the Chiang Mai Zoo in Thailand gave birth.

The Huffington Post reports on the new female cub (picture right). The birth was a surprise but the mother is taking care of her cub well. The Thai panda program had been trying to breed the two pandas on loan from China unsuccessfully for years. At one point they even tried showing the animals videos of other pandas breeding to get them in the mood. This cub was born via artificial insemination.

Ecotravel News' "about me" picture is at this panda exhibit and one of the pandas is eating bamboo in the background. We also did a video about how they make paper souvenirs out of the pandas dung.

Read the full story: Surprise panda cub welcomed in Thailand

From poop to paper, conservation in Thailand

An interesting idea for eco-travel is to visit local businesses that help conserve the environment in unique ways. I recently traveled to Thailand and visited two paper factories who reuse elephant and panda dung to make the paper with. Watch my report below: