MAN v/s WILD

Barren Wounds:
Deforestation Dooms-
day
High Tall Spotted:
The Giraffe Tales
Big Bucks:
The Hunting Season
Koala-fied to Joke:
The Laughs of Nature
Cover Story:
The Geography of
Terror
Was DARWIN
WRONG?

A-MOOSE-ING!!
Barren Wounds:
Deforestation Doomsday 1

High Tall Spotted:

The Giraffe Tales 2

Big Bucks:
The Hunting Season 3

Koala-fied to Joke:
The Laughs of Nature 4

Cover Story:
The Geography of Terror-
Was DARWIN WRONG? 5-7
Barren Wounds
Deforestation Doomsday
MODERN DAY PLAGUE. Deforestation claims a swath of tropical rain forest along the Rio Cha-
gres river basin. The river is a primary water source for the Panama Canal, and deforestation of
the surrounding rain forest causes erosion and sedimentation that can clog the canal.

Deforestation is clearing Earths forests on a mas- Not all deforestation is intentional. Some is caused by
sive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of a combination of human and natural factors like wild-
the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the fires and subsequent overgrazing, which may prevent
worlds land area, but swaths half the size of England the growth of young trees. Deforestation can have a
are lost each year. negative impact on the environment. The most dra-
matic impact is a loss of habitat for millions of species.
The worlds rain forests could completely vanish in Eighty percent of Earths land animals and plants live
a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation. in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation
The biggest driver and a animal of deforestation is ag- that destroys their homes.
riculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room -J. Williams
for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often, small Photographs by Tomas Munita
farmers will clear a few acres by cutting down trees
and burning them in a process known as slash and
burn agriculture. Logging operations, which provide
the worlds wood and paper products, also cut count-
less trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting ille-
gally, also build roads to access more and more remote
forestswhich leads to further deforestation. Forests
are also cut as a result of growing urban sprawl as
land is developed for dwellings.

1
High Tall Spotted
The Giraffe Tales
The Defenders of Nature. Worlds tallest mammal is struggling to find space to live. The
giraffe is a genus of African even-toed ungulate mammals, the tallest living terrestrial animals
and the largest ruminants.
Giraffes are the worlds tallest mammals, thanks to Height and Size
their towering legs and long necks. A giraffes legs Giraffes use their height to good advantage and
alone are taller than many humansabout 6 feet . browse on leaves and buds in treetops that few other
These long legs allow giraffes to run as fast as 35 miles animals can reach (acacias are a favorite). Even the gi-
an hour over short distances and cruise comfortably raffes tongue is long! The 21-inch tongue helps them
at 10 miles an hour over longer distances. pluck tasty morsels from branches. Giraffes eat most
Giraffes have beautiful spotted coats. While no two in- of the time and, like cows, regurgitate food and chew
dividuals have exactly the same pattern, giraffes. it as cud. A giraffe eats hundreds of pounds
of leaves each week and
must travel miles to find
enough food.The giraffes
height also helps it to
A giraffes heart keep a sharp lookout for
weighs about 25 predators across the wide
expanse of the African sa-
pounds - it has to vanna. The giraffes stat-
be that big to pump ure can be a disadvantage
as wellit is difficult and
blood all the way up dangerous for a giraffe to
to its brain drink at a water hole.
To do so they must spread
their legs and bend down
in an awkward position
that makes them
Giraffes are the worlds tallest mammals, thanks to vulnerable to predators like Africas big cats. Giraffes
their towering legs and long necks. A giraffes legs only need to drink once every several days; they get
alone are taller than many humansabout 6 feet . most of their water from the luscious plants they eat.
These long legs allow giraffes to run as fast as 35 miles Female giraffes give birth standing up. Their young en-
an hour over short distances and cruise comfortably dure a rather rude welcome into the world by falling
at 10 miles an hour over longer distances. more than 5 feet to the ground at birth. These infants
Behavior can stand in half an hour and run with their mothers
Typically, these fascinating animals roam the open an incredible ten hours after birth.
grasslands in small groups of about half a dozen. Gi-
raffes only need to drink once every several days; they - Written and photographed by Joel Sartore
get most of their water from the luscious plants they
eat.

2
 Fewer deer taken
in this years two-
week firearm hunting
season.
Hindered by cold, wet
and windy weather at
the start of the states
two-week firearm deer
hunting season, as well as
an abundance of acorns,
fewer deer were taken
this and hence year, ac-
cording to the Maryland
Department of Natural
Resources.
Though hunters took
more than 36,000 deer
during the two-week fire-
arm of the season that
ended Dec. 8, there was a
nearly 20percent drop in
the states most populous
region and a 12 percent
rise and drop throughout
the rest of the state.
Given the nasty weath-
er on the weekend after
Thanksgiving the tra-
ditional first weekend of
the firearm deer-hunting
season as well as the
plentiful acorn crop, Ey-
ler was not surprised by
the decrease.
Its been an off year, Ey-
ler said Friday. When you

BIG
have all that food in the
woods, [the deer] dont
have to move around

BUCKS a lot. The deer are out

there, but they seem to be

THE
moving more at night.
Hunting may have played
an important role, next

HUNTING to plant gathering and

scavenging, for human

SEASON
survival in prehistoric
times, but the vast major-
ity of modern hunters in
developed countries stalk
and kill animals for rec-
reation. Hunting is a vi-
olent and cowardly form
of outdoor entertainment
that kills hundreds of
millions of animals every
year, many of whom are
wounded and die a slow
and painful death.

Hunting
is the relic of Bar-
barism that once
thirsted for human
blood, but is now
contend with the
blood of animals.

-Written by William Jones

3
 Koala-fied
to Joke!
The
Laughs
of
Nature
The importance of wild-
life to a continued hu-
man
existence has never been
more obvious than it is
today.
In recent times, scientists
and authors have begun to
realise that wild animals
are equally, if not more im-
portant than domesticated
animals. People have always
had an awareness of the
consumptive economic im-
portance of hunting or trap-
ping wild animals, but in
recent times other non-con-
sumptive values have be-
come popular. Wildlife has
a wide range of ecological,
economic, and cultural im-
portance in relation to the
human existence.
Nature is, and has always
been, valued for its aesthet-
ic values. In an increasing-
ly commercialised world
which can often feel cold
and empty.

4

Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of
the lifes work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. Its a the-
ory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and di-
versity among Earths living creatures. If you are skep-
tical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of
science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence,
you might even be tempted to say that its just a the-
ory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Al-
bert Einstein is just a theory. theory. Even electricity
is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which
are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever
seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has
been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and
experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as
fact. Thats what scientists mean when they talk about
a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but
an explanatory statement that fits the evidence.
It is not the strongest of the species that
survives, nor the most intelligent , but the
one most responsive to change
WAS
DARWIN
WRONG?
The work of the
19th-century English
naturalist shocked soci-
ety and revolutionized
science. How well has
it withstood the test of
time?
-By Charles Darwin
Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving
electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that
no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an ex-
planation that has been confirmed to such a degree,
by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable
experts accept it as fact. Thats what scientists mean
when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unre-
liable speculation, but an explanatory statement that
fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation
confidently but provisionallytaking it as their best
available view of reality, at least until some severe-
ly conflicting data or some better explanation might
come along. The notion that Earth orbits around the
sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in
1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The
existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic
theory.
5
The rest of us generally agree. We plug our televisions
into little wall sockets, measure a year by the length
of Earths orbit, and in many other ways live our lives
based on the trusted reality of those theories.
Evolutionary theory, though, is a bit different. Its such
a dangerously wonderful and far-reaching view of life
that some people find it unacceptable, despite the vast
body of supporting evidence. As applied to our own
species, Homo sapiens, it can seem more threatening
still. Many fundamentalist Christians and ultra-ortho-
dox Jews take alarm at the thought that human de-
scent from earlier primates contradicts a strict read-
ing of the Book of Genesis.
6
Their discomfort is paralleled by Islamic creationists
such as Harun Yahya, author of a recent volume titled
The Evolution Deceit, who points to the six-day cre-
ation story in the Koran as literal truth and calls the
theory of evolution nothing but a deception imposed
on us by the dominators of the world system. The
late Srila Prabhupada, of the Hare Krishna movement,
explained that God created the 8,400,000 species
of life from the very beginning, in order to establish
multiple tiers of reincarnation for rising souls.
Although souls ascend, the species themselves dont
change, he insisted, dismissing Darwins nonsensical
theory.
Other people too, not just scriptural literalists, remain
unpersuaded about evolution. According to a Gallup
We are the result of 4 billion
poll drawn from more than a thousand telephone in- years
terviews conducted in February 2001, no less than of Evolutionary success. ACT
45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that God
created human beings pretty much in their present LIKE IT.
form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.

Evolution, by their lights, played no role in shaping us.
Only 37 percent of the polled Americans were satis-
fied with allowing room for both God and Darwin
that is, divine initiative to get things started, evolution
as the creative means.

7
 Small acts when multiplied by millions of people, can
transform the world.