Ursa Freedom Project is putting together its first anthology in praise of bears. The intent of the anthology is to draw attention to the need to protect and conserve the world's bears, as 6 of the 8 bear species are perched on the brink of extinction. Contributions from children are welcome too!
Read the guidelines for the anthology

Ecopaparazzi members are every day people taking direct action to solve eco problems in their community. YOU are the world's #1 green celebrities.

Eco-Active Celebrity
Ecopaparazzi member Maren

Maren Dallman loves the biodiversity found on Earth and is most concerned about losing this very feature that is unique to our planet. Maren is an advocate for cruelty-free living and ending all forms of animal torture for human sport, entertainment, health and economic gain. She devotes much of her time to helping organizations rescue bears from abusive situations and improving the lives of bears through campaigns to end bear bile farming, trophy hunting, den hunting and bear baiting.

Eco-Active Celebrity
Ecopaparazzi member Chris

Chris Genovali is the director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation, a science-based conservation non-profit that works to protect wilderness and wildlife throughout coastal British Columbia. Chris loves the diversity of life and views nature as his religion. Like his eco hero Edward Abbey, Chris believes "wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit."

Eco-Active Celebrity
Ecopaparazzi member Ashley

Ashley Wetzel is a biology student studying large cats, and is fully engaged in wild cat conservation. Her goal is to live in Botswana studying large cats when she achieves her qualified degrees. Ashley plans student events to raise awareness and funds for wildlife conservation and animal welfare organizations, and keeps an eco blogspot current. She admires people who "step up and put their neck on the line for the creatures of this beautiful planet."

Eco-Active Celebrity
Ecopaparazzi member Rick

Because Rick loves the beauty of forests, rivers, oceans and animals, he takes an active role in reading and learning different ways to help protect them. He uses eco-friendly products, gets active in eco campaigns and conservation efforts, and helps teach others about ways to get involved to make the world a better place. Rick also has a soft spot in his heart for impoverished children and carves toys for them that he donates to help bring a little joy into their lives.

Eco-Active Celebrity
Ecopaparazzi member Diana

Diana Oleskevich and her bicycle are inseparable. The green cyclist uses her bicycle to lessen her eco footprint, raise money for charity and get exercise. She says, "I ride my bike for fun and commuting as much as I can for conservation, to stop pollution, raise awareness, build community and experience joy." Diana stands in radical amazement of all that is.

Eco-Active Celebrity
Ecopaparazzi member Siew Te Wong

Wong is a foremost expert on sun bears, a species listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened and Endangered Species. The sun bear, though nearing extinction, is the world's least known bear species. We can change that and raise awareness about the need to save this species. Read more about Wong and his work with sun bears on his ecopaparazzi profile page.

Eco-Active Celebrity
Ecopaparazzi member Guy

GuyThaLizard is most at home in nature, when snuggled into his kayak, hand-held GPS at the ready, paddling Canada's Okanagan Valley and Kootenay areas. His passion is organizing paddling trips with fellow water enthusiasts and sharing their experiences online at his three social networks. Guy's favorite quote is, "If you are not living on the edge, you are taing up too much space."

Read our archives of previously featured Eco Active Celebs.

Visit our sister site for green bloggers and book authors.

This column focuses on what people are doing right to foster Earth Healing through awareness and direct action. Got a story? Send it.

More people are joining the slow food movement and buying from small-scale farmers, which, in turn, is creating more farmers markets and creating a better quality of life for humans and live stock and contributing to Earth healing.

People are catching on to living lightly through their consumer purchases and understanding the value of less glamour, more gratitude.

Chefs like Emeril Lasgasse are sharing healthy recipes and eco-friendly cooking tips. And people like us are watching, listening and learning, and sharing the news with friends.

We're demanding bans on smoking in public places and holding governments and corporations accountable for corporate-produced toxins. But according to a Swedish study, we need to put serious focus on household flooring. The study reveals that infants or toddlers who live in bedrooms with vinyl or PVC floors are twice as likely to have autism than those with wood or linoleum flooring.

We're educating ourselves and learning which appliances cut our electric bill and energy consumption and ditching those that don't contribute to Earth healing.

The plight of tigers took over John Varty's life, turning him from globetrotting filmmaker, khaki-clad-playboy and one of Africa’s most glamorous “wild men” and game hunters (including large cats) to an impoverished conservationist on a desperate personal mission to save tigers from extinction.

His ideas are getting more traction in South Africa and he is expanding his borders. He is persuading farmers on the marginal sheep farms around Tiger Canyons to turn over the damaged pasture to natural game and tigers. He is also starting to open up some satellite reserves and partnering with other private African collections that have tigers and persuading them to join his cause.

His film includes teaching his two young sons some of the skills and techniques that he learned as a boy at the knee of African trackers and poachers. But instead of teaching his sons how to kill a leopard or lion, as he himself did as a boy, Varty is instilling in his own sons a different passion for nature and the skills to help them take care of it in the future.

Gene Hashmi, Greenpeace India Campaigner

Gene Hashmi engages in civil disobedience to challenge environmental crime, a form of direct action that Gene says was sparked in his home country of India.

"Sometimes, this action involves putting yourself between the whaling ship and the whale. Sometimes, it involves chaining yourself to a bulldozer in a rainforest. Sometimes, it involves hanging banners from bridges," he says.

And sometimes, Gene says, "it means "we’re yanked up, carted off in a police van to the lock-up, reprimanded, served tea and let go all before lunch hour."

But other times the jail sentence is longer.

Following a climate change protest action, Gene and his crew of climate activists were handcuffed and hauled to the police station.

"If trying to save the world from climate change relegated us to the ranks of hard criminals, we all stood guilty as charged. But that’s not what we were charged with. We were booked under the same laws that are used to keep extremist groups like the Al Qaeda in check.

We were after all “eco-terrorists,” which really means just another form of “terrorism” in the language of a failing democracy.

In the quest to protect national security, the state now applies a medieval criminal justice system to completely legitimate acts of creative, nonviolent dissent. We were packed in a cell with 32 other inmates. Individuals charged with rape, murder or worse.

Two years later, on the day I turned 36, the jail gates opened. The Inspector General of Police, held out his hand as we parted and said, 'I don’t want you to leave with any hard feelings. We’re both just doing our jobs. Your job is to keep the world safe from environmental pollution. Mine is to keep it safe from social pollution.'

So that is how eco-warriors are now referred in the parlance of our times; “social pollution.”

My daughter Johanna was four years old when I was jailed for being a social polluter. She’s six years old now. In these past two years, instead of building fewer coal-fired power plants, our government has been building more of these damned abominations.

What is truly unfair is that the people building these coal-fired power plants won’t be around when the full, ungloved fist of climate chaos finally smashes our nose bones into our brain. They won’t be running from refugee camp to refugee camp as environmental wars break out. They won’t be escaping hunger and droughts and famine and disease.

But Johanna will.

It is for her, and for every wondrous living thing from the blue whale to the hummingbird, that I work to reclaim the space and language of dissent that we have silently given away in this failed democracy of ours."