Word: vastness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Over the years, elephants by the thousands have been slaughtered so that their ivory can be used, for example, in Japanese signature seals, and wedding ornaments are fashioned from the shells of endangered hawksbill turtles. Japanese fishermen have drawn impassioned criticism for their use of huge drift nets across vast expanses of the Pacific. The nets, which are up to 40 miles wide, are intended to catch squid and tuna, but also entangle many other kinds of fish as well as seabirds and marine mammals. Roger McManus, president of the Washington-based Center for Marine Conservation, has gone...
...caps with yellow ribbons and T shirts with provocative slogans (SAVE A LOGGER -- EAT AN OWL). But when it was over, the two sides appeared ready to attempt a two-year compromise that would both preserve the spotted owl's home and permit continued logging in reduced but still vast areas of federal lands...
...courage to raise taxes. The problem is that the poor play quite as much as those who are better off and can more easily afford it. Mark Michalko, former director of the California lottery, disputes the idea that lotteries are in effect a regressive tax on the poor. "The vast majority of players are middle-income and higher," he says. Yet he concedes that "there is some small percentage of people in the lower-income brackets who play ((to excess)), and by definition it is going to be a higher percentage of their income. But so are food, clothing...
...suffer some basic flaws: they do not work in rough seas, and heavy crude tends to seep under a boom and clog a skimmer. Finally, the devices are all but useless when confronted with a devastatingly large spill like the Valdez disaster. Once the oil had spread over the vast Prince William Sound, a boat towing a skimmer needed fully 14 hours to clear one narrow swath across the 35-mile-wide bay. The chemical dispersants often used in oil cleanups have problems too. They cannot function in calm water, and because they are toxic, they can seriously damage fish...
Such statistics have persuaded many people that some territories should be placed off limits to oil-field development. Last week the House Appropriations Committee voted to enact a yearlong ban on drilling off vast areas of the coasts of California and Florida, a 50-mile stretch of the mid-Atlantic and part of New England. Congress has never before urged so sweeping a ban on offshore exploration. The committee also voted for a year's moratorium on oil and gas exploration in Alaska's Bristol Bay, an exceedingly rich fishing area...