Word: bamboos
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...been hidden by a layer of snow. "I thought, 'What a place to die,' " the Japanese explorer later recalled." 'So far away from home.' " But he managed to struggle out, and thereafter on big climbs, he always carried a pair of sturdy 17-ft.-long bamboo poles to test the snow...
...Those bamboo poles and an abandoned pair of snowshoes were the only traces late last week of the celebrated mountain climber. He was reported missing and feared lost on the west face of North America's highest peak, Mount McKinley in Alaska. His disappearance came just days after a spectacular success: on Feb. 12, his 43rd birthday, Uemura had become the first climber to make a solo ascent of the 20,320-ft. peak in midwinter...
...recent survey of the Wolong region, the largest of China's twelve panda reserves and site of a joint China-World Wildlife Fund panda study project, Botanist Qin Zisheng discovered that 95% of the bamboo had already bloomed. Now the pandas, which normally eat 25 to 30 lbs. of bamboo daily, are starting to eat ordinary grasses, although apparently without much joy: Qin says an examination of panda droppings indicates that the animals are suffering from indigestion...
...whiter arrives and snow blankets the mountains, the pandas will face more than tummy aches. Two have already died. In 1975-76 a similar flower-and-die disaster involving the umbrella bamboo, which is in a different growth cycle, led to the deaths by starvation of 138 animals in a panda habitat on the border of Sichuan and Gansu provinces...
...avert a similar calamity in arrow-bamboo regions, where a sizable portion of the wild pandas dwell, Chinese scientists, aided by the World Wildlife Fund, are undertaking emergency measures. One tactic: leaving roasted pork chops and goat meat on the mountain slopes in hopes that the pandas will turn from their normal vegetarian diet. Explained Schaller: "They'll eat meat if they can get it easily." The scientists are also using meat to lure pandas to lower-lying regions where other types of bamboo may be available...