Word: savannas
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...years, using techniques that have enabled modern zoos and botanical gardens to put diverse habitats together in relatively narrow confines. At the same time, they have searched the world for representative flora and fauna that can re- create five different miniature biomes, or ecosystems: rain forest, savanna, desert, ocean and marsh...
Striding majestically across the savanna, the African elephant is an unmistakable symbol of power and strength. As recently as the 1970s, its numbers were so great that some conservationists worried about overpopulation. Now the elephant is involved in a desperate struggle to survive, and the reason for its peril is one of its glories: the huge creature's magnificent tusks of ivory. Since the early 1980s, the price of ivory has surged from $25 per lb. to $80 per lb. As a result, growing bands of wily and ruthless poachers have taken to hunting down elephants illegally all across Africa...
Realizing that if elephants vanish, so might tourists, some African nations are determined to slow down the killing. In addition, the animal is a vital part of Africa's unique ecosystem. For eons, elephants have knocked down trees, helping to give Africa its distinctive mix of forest and savanna and opening up the land for other big mammals...
...glacial period, and in southern Africa the climate was cooler than it is today. Giraffes, hyenas and baboons abounded, along with now extinct giant horses and hartebeests and buffalo with 13-ft. horn spans. Neanderthal man had not yet emerged, but intelligent beings already roamed the savanna, upright creatures known today as archaic Homo sapiens, who could fashion crude axes, picks and cleavers out of stone. On a clear night 170,000 years ago, one of these ancestors of man may have looked up at a milky band of stars stretching across the sky, his eyes pausing briefly...
UNITA's efforts to topple the Luanda government have laid waste the countryside. Since the war began, guerrilla attacks and government mismanagement have combined to drive food production down by 80%; even in the fertile savanna plateau running across the heart of the country, half the children are suffering from malnutrition. Angola's diamond production, which once ranked fourth in the world, has plummeted by nearly 70%. Only the country's vast oil resources, including those controlled by Chevron Corp.'s subsidiary Gulf, continue to bolster the war effort. However, there are estimates that almost half of last year...