Word: mara
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...annual wildebeest migration is one of nature's most spectacular photo-ops. More than a million wildebeest - also known as gnus - crossing from the Serengeti in Tanzania to Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve and then back again in the search of fresh grass makes for some dramatic action shots, as massive herds travel across the plains before plunging into the Mara River to swim to greener pastures...
...photos from this year's migration are just as dramatic, but for a different reason. This time, piles of wildebeest carcasses line the riverbanks, after 10,000 of the animals drowned trying to cross the Mara at the start of their journey back east to the Serengeti. The deaths are natural: each year, crocodiles and the strong current claim some victims. The numbers, though, are bizarre. The migration rarely leaves more than a few thousand dead; but this year, an estimated 10,000, or about 1% of the wildebeest population, were wiped out. Conservationists say the wildebeest simply chose...
Nature can be cruel, but sometimes it gets some help. The Mara River was especially high this year, after the heavy rains that flooded parts of Africa, killing hundreds of people and uprooting thousands more. Climatologists are pointing to the downpours as proof that predictions that Africa will suffer the most from global warming and climate change are already coming true. The human toll is what makes all the headlines, but the consequences for Africa's wildlife is just as drastic...
...fashioned Nicaraguan nationalism may also have helped keep the gang culture at bay, since the major transnational gangs that terrorize Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras - the Mara Salvatrucha and the M-18 - are essentially foreign, originating in Los Angeles. Mauricio Bustamante, 19, spent three years living in Guatemala spying on M-18 for the Salvatrucha before returning to Nicaragua and getting involved in his old local gang, the Cumbas. He says that Nicaraguan gangs have rejected the culture of the Salvatrucha and M-18 in keeping with the Nicaraguan spirit of resistance to foreign intervention...
...Mara Vanderslice would know, since she was the person nominally in charge of shaping his religious identity. Vanderslice, who just turned 32, is a secret agent of sorts who grew up in a Unitarian Democratic household in Boulder, Colo., where she was raised to believe that Christians tended to be Republicans and vice versa. She went off to Earlham College in Indiana, an earnest Quaker school with a dry campus where students took themselves and their role in the world seriously. A semester abroad in Central America launched her on a spiritual journey, which led to her baptism by full...