Word: plant
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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They look sturdy, even hostile, but cactus plants in the southwestern United States and Mexico are under attack. According to wildlife conservationists, cactuses are being dug up and smuggled away at an alarming rate by over-zealous collectors looking for rare species and "narco-tourists" mining the desert for the small, psychotropic peyote plant...
...society is now gearing up to launch another protection program for Arizona's signature cactus, the saguaro, whose beautiful white blossoms are the state flower. While the saguaro is not among Arizona's seven endangered cactus species, the shallow-rooted plant is often preyed upon by poachers, who can earn up to $60 a foot for a wild specimen, Wiedhopf says. The desert symbol grows slowly, about an inch a year - it can take six or seven decades for the saguaro cactus to grow an arm - and those 15-to-20-foot saguaros that dot the Sonoran desert...
...despite conservationists best efforts, poachers and drug smugglers have little regard for them - or for protection laws. Some hard-core collectors won't miss any opportunity to swipe a cactus. That's why visitors to Copenhagen's botanical gardens must view rare cactus plants behind glass walls and, as a curator at London's world famous Kew Gardens told Terry, "Every year, we put out a plant and every year someone steals...
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained about 600 workers at a factory in Laurel on suspicion that they were illegal immigrants. It was ICE's largest raid at a single workplace; in May, agents descended on a kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa, arresting some 400 people. ICE arrested nearly 5,000 workers...
...Zeppelin lyrics sanitized during Olympics closing ceremony. Robert Plant replaced by THIS GIRL...