Word: wildes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There are two important things to know about tracking wild elephants, and it's better to learn both of them before you're actually in the jungle, tracking wild elephants. First, elephants are fast. In thick forest - in this case, the vast Ulu Masen ecosystem in the Indonesian province of Aceh, where leeches writhe beneath your feet and white-handed gibbons hoot from the treetops - they can outpace even deer. Second, elephants can't climb trees. This is good, because that's precisely what you're meant to do if one of them charges...
...Into the Wild There are several unique aspects to Aceh that have allowed the scheme's creators to blaze a trail. First, a decades-long separatist insurgency by the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) saved the province from the logging frenzy seen across the rest of Sumatra. "If you went into the forest back then there was a chance you'd get shot," says Matthew Linkie, an FFI technical manager based in the province's capital Banda Aceh. (See "COP15: Climate-Change Conference...
...Human Touch Kamarullah, 43, once carried an ak-47 assault rifle through this forest. Today, he grips four fireworks in one hand and a disposable lighter in the other, to scare off wild elephants. Kamarullah, who goes by a single name, is a lithe, taciturn man who spent eight years fighting for GAM; one of his five daughters was born in hiding in the jungle. How many enemy troops did he kill? "I didn't count," he says, grinning shyly...
...Wild elephants, not loggers, are the rangers' main problem right now. Crops planted by returning farmers are proving irresistible to two local herds. At a farm nearby, elephants have trampled banana and cacao trees, toppled betel-nut palms and left jumbo-size footprints in the fishponds. There, at the forest edge, humans and animals must coexist. Each morning, the calls of gibbons compete with the calls to prayer from nearby village mosques...
...anyone see new movies this weekend? A few people. Old Dogs - the semi-geezer semi-comedy that teamed the director (Walt Becker) and one of the stars (John Travolta) of the surprise hit Wild Hogs with aging jackanapes Robin Williams - cadged a modest $16.8 for the three days. And the mayhem-festooned action film Ninja Assassin was the decade's lowest-grossing opening for the Wackowski brothers, once renowned for The Matrix. Its $13.1 million three-day gross was considerably below not only V for Vendetta but the widely reviled (and, take one stubborn critic's word for it, visually...