Word: bamboos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...borders the Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, a pristine rainforest that remains one of the crown jewels of Madagascar's denuded landscape. The park is full of the rare animals that Madagascar is famous for - the panda-like indiri lemur, Parson's chameleons that blend into the trees, the greater bamboo lemurs, perhaps the rarest primate on the planet. One of the local guides, Marie Razafindrasolo, led me on a tour of the forest, spotting animals that I would never have noticed myself...
...buildings often lack doors and have awkward gaps between the bricks to facilitate cooling. Baker’s team, the Centre of Science and Technology for Rural Development associates and follows Mahatma Gandhi’s edict that all materials be found within a five-mile radius: wood, bamboo, stone, cactus milk, pig urine, and recycled bottles, to name a few. The result is cheap, safe, high-quality, and environmentally friendly housing that appears to simply grow out of the ground...
...What exactly did this spirit city possess, I inquired? The shaman replied: on the lower part of our terraced land, near a rustling stand of bamboo, the spirits had built their own pharmacy, auto-body-repair shop and even a food stall that served fried rice. No infinity-edge swimming pool would be going there, lest we flood the otherworldly denizens picking up a prescription or delivering a motorcycle for a tune-up. We also would need to leave a section of riverbank undeveloped because a local demigod traversed the land on his daily pilgrimage to a volcano up north...
...eroded wastelands, capable of supporting few animals or people. Though the rate of deforestation has been reduced sharply in recent years, thanks in part to a greener government, Madagascar's protected areas are still threatened by new mining projects and simple human population growth. Mammals like the greater bamboo lemur are highly sensitive to their environment; if we lose the small stretch of forests in the southeastern reaches of Madagascar that this animal calls home, there is nowhere else it can go. It will be lost. That story is being repeated throughout much of the world, where mammals like...
...threatened mammals could be as high as 36%," noted Jan Schipper, the director of the Global Mammal Assessment for CI. If we don't act soon, our children may live in a world where the only place they'll be able to see unique mammals like Madagascar's greater bamboo lemur will be in history books...