Word: forester
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...protests of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups that oppose any human intercession while the condors fight for survival, scientists from the National Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service entered the birds' habitat in California's Los Padres National Forest last February and March. They snatched two fertilized eggs from two roosts and transferred them to incubators at the zoo. The eggnaping, the scientists hoped, would protect the embryos against tumbles from the nest, attacks by predators or, as happened once last year, destructive fights between condor parents over...
...peasants in the district, claiming to be the daughter of the local Gentile whore. But if she is spared deportation as a Jew, she is execrated as one of the devil's brood. "The peasants drove her mercilessly. She cleaned the cow shed ... brought firewood from the forest. At night the peasant's wife would mutter: 'You know who your mother is. You must pay for your sins. Your mother has corrupted whole villages.' " Wherever Tzili goes the peasants beat her with sticks and ropes...
Despite all this action, some environmentalists found the Watt endorsement and Ruckelshaus' ties to industry disturbing. Since 1976 he has been a senior vice president of Weyerhaeuser Co., the huge Tacoma, Wash., forest-products firm that was named one of the nation's "Filthy Five" companies by Environmental Action, an environmental lobbying group. But others praised the nomination, giving Ruckelshaus high marks for his stewardship of the fledgling EPA from 1970 to 1973, when he fought consistently with the major automakers over air-pollution controls, banned a number of controversial herbicides and forced steelmakers and electric utilities...
Inland the story is worse. Each year nearly 4.4 million acres of forest are destroyed. In Central America, vast tracts have been converted to pasture land, largely to raise beef for the U.S. market, while natural grasslands in Venezuela and Colombia go largely unused. Still another reason for loss of forests is the in creasing incidence of slash-and-burn agriculture. As impoverished peasants lose their traditional lands to the spreading single-crop plantations, they move higher and higher up forested mountains, clearing away timber for firewood and subsistence farming. In Haiti and Jamaica, the results have been disastrous...
...less damaging are the effects on the rain forest's flora and fauna. Perhaps a hundred of the famed parrots that appear on St. Lucia's stamps are believed to be still left. Conservationists estimate that 40% of the vertebrates that have become extinct around the world in recent years have died off in the Caribbean. Scientists can only guess how many species of plants are permanently gone. Such losses represent a tragic assault on the splendid diversity of terrestrial life. They deprive us of genetic varieties that could have been valuable for any number of purposes, from...