Word: rain
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...they wanted to name him heir to the goddess Nafanua. When he declined, fearing that the title would interfere with his research, the villagers refused to sign the preservation agreement. Cox relented. "Being a deity is not my cup of tea," he says, "but Nafanua stands for conservation and rain-forest ecology, so I said to them, 'O.K., I'll take the cards I've been dealt.'" Now chiefs and children alike respectfully address him as Nafanua...
...foundation has since provided money for the Western Samoan village of Tafua to preserve its 20,000-acre rain forest. It helped persuade Congress to authorize the National Park of American Samoa--about 10,000 acres of forest and 420 acres of coral reefs in the neighboring archipelago. And it has helped villages build schools, medical clinics and cisterns to catch rainfall, the main source of drinking water...
...dreams that one day soon the people of Western Samoa will see the benefit of preserving not only the rain forests surrounding their villages but also the vast cloud forests that still cloak the sides of the volcanoes that form the spine of Savai'i. Here he hopes the villagers will agree to "make the biggest national park in the whole world," before the chain saws get there too. He wants them to become as excited about the project as he is, rather than have the impetus come from outside. Behind this goal lies a philosophy that runs through...
...your basic lab experiment, akin to those bubbling in high school chemistry labs every week. In this case, the goal was to determine whether plant samples from the Ecuadorian rain forest contained chemical properties that could be used to combat diabetes. Immerse the leaves in an alcohol extract, then a water extract, and see what happens...
Giant pharmaceutical firms have long prospected the rain forests, screening randomly selected plants for potential products. But under Conte's direction, Shaman became one of the first companies to rely on the ancestral wisdom of native cultures. "It was a light bulb," Conte says. "Why not leverage out this knowledge of how plants have been used for thousands of years to get something that's more likely to be effective and safe...