Word: habitat
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Owners of marine parks and dolphin shows claim to be educating the public. But about what? Certainly not about a dolphin's natural habitat. It is not natural for a dolphin to swim in circles in a man-made tank, exposed to loud music; shallow, chemically treated water; and humans. It is not natural for a hungry dolphin to play basketball, tail-walk, sing or dance just to get a dead fish. Buying a ticket to see or play with a captive dolphin is what increases the demand for their capture and subsequently their death...
Business is pitching in too. Wild Birds Unlimited, a chain that sells birdseed, feeders, binoculars and other birding gear, has joined with the National Wildlife Federation to sponsor a Habitat Stewards program that teaches people how to turn their backyards into wildlife refuges. N.W.F. president Mark Van Putten notes that birders are one of the biggest groups in his membership. "They are only beginning to be mobilized," he says. "They could be a real force...
...This vast animal kingdom, a deal involving South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, guarantees the lives of at least 1,000 elephants. Instead of being culled because their habitat can't sustain them, they will be trucked-in the world's biggest managed wildlife migration - from South Africa's Kruger Park to Mozambique...
...mentality that made them successful businessmen, in fact, may be making them rotten ranchers. "All the time I hear they want to restore to the native habitat with buffalo and bluebonnets," says Neil Wilkins, a wildlife biologist at A&M. "They call and say, 'I've already cleared the brush, now what?'" Of course, they have destroyed the very habitat that attracted wildlife. "These people are used to running corporations, and, by gosh, they want to see some changes fast," says Wilkins. "They make sure some dirt gets pushed around, and more often than not it results in something...
...past 20 years the Leakeys and others have dug up overwhelming evidence showing that between 2.5 million and 1 million years ago, the then lush woodlands and savannas of eastern Africa--where our family tree first took root--were the habitat of rival species, most of which were evolutionary dead ends. But what about before that? Paleontologists have generally agreed that there was just one hominid line, beginning with a small, upright-walking species known as Australopithecus afarensis, most famously represented by "Lucy," a remarkably complete (about 40%) skeleton found in Ethiopia...