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POPS3 Next-Gen Animal Prosthetics Build Perfect Beasts Humans aren't the only ones who benefit from artificial (and often robotic) advances in high-tech medicine. Kangaroos, dolphins, birds and even elephants have all received artificial parts. Scientists involved in these efforts believe outfitting disabled animals with prosthetics can maintain biodiversity and help save endangered species. Here are the tales of three lucky patients from the other kingdom.
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POPSWildlife in the DMZ: Vanishing rainforest of the Congo basin 1, The demilitarised zone (DMZ) separating South and North Korea is home to over 1,000 plant species and rare animals. The DMZ Forum is a lobby group promoting the idea of turning the area into a nature reserve. 2. The forest is the world's biggest after the Amazon. Now Britain and Norway have created a £108m fund to help protect it from logging and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The Congo basin forest is home to around 50 million people in six countries including Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Congo-Brazzaville. The Congo basin forest is twice the size of France and exceeded in size only by the Amazon. It is estimated that logging - much of it illegal - destroys an area the size of 25,000 football pitches every week. The UN estimates that at present rates two-thirds of the forest will have vanished by the year 2040.
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POPSAPNewsBreak: Oil Companies Get OK: NW Coast Of Alaska "The oil and gas industry in operating under the kind of rules they have operated under for 15 years has not been a threat to the species," H. Dale Hall, the Fish and Wildlife Service's director, told The Associated Press on Friday. "It was the ice melting and the habitat going away that was a threat to the species over everything else." "Polar bears are already protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which has more stringent protections for polar bears than the Endangered Species Act does," Kempthorne said. Administration and industry officials said oil companies enjoyed similar status in the Chukchi Sea from 1991 to 1996 and in the Beaufort Sea since 1993 and there was no effect on polar bear populations. "These rules are essentially an insurance policy," said Marilyn Crockett, "They say if you conduct your operations in accordance to the requirement in this rule, you will not be held liable for the take of the bears."
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POPSTiger Pictures Siberian tigers are among the world's most endangered species. They are estimated to number less than 500 in the wild. In about 100 years only a dozen white tigers have been seen in the wild in India. Other Photos at the website include: A 26-day-old endangered Sumatran tiger cub cuddles up to a 5-month-old female orangutan One of Australia's only two 'tigons,' a man-made hybrid created by crossing a male tiger with a lioness, licks its lips at the National Zoo. Bearing the stripes of a tiger and the physique of a lioness, tigons are usually infertile. An Indian Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris) walks in a pool at a zoo