Word: braziller
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Before Brazil's great land rush, the emerald rain forests of Rondonia state were an unspoiled showcase for the diversity of life. In this lush territory south of the Amazon, there was hardly a break in the canopy of 200-ft.-tall trees, and virtually every acre was alive with the cacophony of all kinds of insects, birds and monkeys. Then, beginning in the 1970s, came the swarms of settlers, slashing and burning huge swaths through the forest to create roads, towns and fields. They came to enjoy a promised land, but they have merely produced a network of devastation...
...Himalayan foothills that are being denuded by villagers in search of firewood, building materials and arable land; New Caledonia, 83% of whose plants occur nowhere else; the eastern slope of the Andes, as well as forests in East Africa, peninsular Malaysia, northeast Australia and along the Atlantic coast of Brazil...
Throughout the developing nations there are encouraging stirrings of local environmental activity. In Malaysia blowgun-armed Penan tribesmen have joined forces with environmentalists in an effort to stop rampant logging. And in Brazil, which has some 500 conservation organizations, environmentalist Jose Pedro de Oliveira Costa organized a coalition of legislators, conservationists, industrialists and media barons to stir public support to preserve Brazil's remaining Atlantic forests. "The threats to the forests remain," said Costa, "but now at least there is a network in place to scream when a threat arises...
Whether or not that theory is correct, an event of no less magnitude is taking place at this very moment, but this time its agent is man. The wholesale burning and cutting of forests in Brazil and other countries, as one major example, are destroying irreplaceable species every day. Says Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson: "The extinctions ongoing worldwide promise to be at least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the age of dinosaurs...
...bigger than South America, even though it is only about the size of Mexico. The National Geographic's Van der Grinten projection, which has been used for the past 66 years, shows Alaska blown up to five times its real size, making it appear the rough equivalent of Brazil, which is actually six times as large. Acknowledges Garver: "The only accurate map is a globe...