Word: palm
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...which squirms its mostly unmarked way through dense jungles, over rugged hills and along broad rivers. Just beyond Batugade, at the most northwesterly point of the border, barbed wire and guards block the road into Indonesia. But a kilometer south is a large unfenced clearing amid thickets of stubby palm trees where the constant smugglers' traffic has flattened an area the size of a basketball court. It is littered with the yellow hessian bags used to carry contraband and the remains of smugglers' campfires. "I see the police about once a week," says Alfredo, an Indonesian petrol smuggler. Other smugglers...
...sensitive coral reefs, part of the largest such ecosystem in the United States, have been sliced through by boats in two incidents over the last month. Indeed, because of choppy conditions, the assessment of the damage at one site, a mile offshore from the famed Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, was not possible until this week. It is now believed that a cable line from a tug boat, or possibly lobster traps, cut a swath estimated at about 200 yards long and 70 feet wide. A diver with the state's fish and wildlife conservation commission who surveyed the area...
...diver who scoped the 50-foot-deep waters off Palm Beach before the state could examine the damage called it the worst he's ever seen from a single incident. Added Ed Tichenor, director of Palm Beach County Reef Rescue, who reported the damage to state agencies: "As far as I've been diving here, I haven't heard of a similar incident of this magnitude." The other damaged reef is located off a state park just south of Port Everglades. There, sponges have been sliced, and soft and hard corals cut and turned over. (See pictures of imperiled coral...
...aground and caused the reef damage in Broward County, sending a crew out on Tuesday for an assessment. "We have a lot of broken corals there that need to be removed," said Chantal Collier, manager of the state's Coral Reef Conservation Program. Meanwhile, the non-profit volunteer group Palm Beach County Reef Rescue on Tuesday announced a $2,500 reward for any information leading to the culprits who caused the latest damage in the Breakers...
...caused damage might never be found. "In this case, it's a big ocean and something passed through without anyone noticing what happened," says Erin McDevitt, a habitat coordinator with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and one of four divers who assessed the underwater damage off Palm Beach on Tuesday. Unless someone comes forward, finding the culprit is extremely difficult. "It's a needle in a haystack...