Word: wildly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Until recently, nests were mainly harvested from caves in the wild, and the trade was dominated by a ruthless and well-connected élite. Now, fueled by insatiable demand from prospering China, a regional boom in farming nests in purpose-built birdhouses - "swiftlet condos," as they're sometimes called - is democratizing the business. "It's recession-proof," enthuses Harry Kok, a retired Malaysian engineer who owns or has shares in five birdhouses and writes a blog on the subject from his Kuala Lumpur home. "The overheads are minimal. You don't have a factory with so many workers. Right...
...Even if you build it, they don't always come. Up to two-thirds of birdhouses fail to attract a self-supporting colony of birds, estimates Kok. "We don't really understand them," he says. "They are wild animals. We find that they like to stay in dark areas. But at one hotel in Malacca they are nesting in bright light." Lucky producers can harvest two to four pounds of nests a month, worth up to $500 per pound ($1,100 per kg). Middlemen are buying up all the nests they can source, usually as quietly as possible. "They come...
...pictures of Santa gone wild...
...naturalist Redmond O'Hanlon used to come to these parts in search of untouched rainforest and unadulterated indigenous life. His Into the Heart of Borneo recounts a 1983 attempt, with poet pal James Fenton, to "rediscover" the Borneo rhinoceros near Sarawak's mountainous border with Indonesia. O'Hanlon describes wild dance parties at Dayak longhouses, fueled by gallons of tuak, a potent milky rice wine, and enthuses about jaw-dropping tangles of tropical growth along the Rajang and its watery veins, some walled in by lush, 200-ft.-high (60 m) tree canopies...
Dayak customs are disappearing fast as younger generations leave longhouses for logging jobs or work in the cities, growing accustomed to the comforts of an industrialized world - you'll see a thousand gray Astro satellite dishes around Belaga before marking a wild hornbill along the turbid Rajang. I sip limeades with Calvin at a riverfront café on my last night in town. He points to a weathered chieftain's tomb on the opposite bank, a wooden blur amid ferns and rubber and durian trees. The family hasn't maintained it for years, and restoration is unlikely. It's getting...