By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF Nearly 60 percent of Mexico’s original languages are at risk of disappearing due to the government’s disinterest in defending them, globalization and the lack of a budget to protect cultural heritage and linguistics, a group of representatives of indigenous organizations warned Monday, Feb. 14. Of the more than 7,000 languages currently spoken worldwide, half
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS As the world unites to fight off the pandemic of coronavirus, yet another plague is threatening the earth and mankind: the threat of the loss of the world’s bee populations. Bees are the world’s chief pollinators, fertilizing about a third of all the food we eat, and 80 percent of all flowering plants. Collectively, they account for
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS With less than 80 Sumatran rhinoceroses left in the wild, and only a few in captivity, the Sumatran rhino, the smallest of the five species of this endangered family of odd-toed ungulates, was officially declared extinct in Malaysia in 2015. The two-horned Asian rhino currently competes with the Javan rhino (of which there are about 100 left
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS In the world of plants, nothing arouses passions like an orchid. Throughout history, collectors have bartered for them, displayed them in royal palaces, placed them under armed military guards, stolen them, waged wars over them and risked their lives in dark, rainforest jungles to obtain the showiest or most recently discovered bloom in what is now a $100-billion a year
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS Last month, Sudan, the world’s last surviving male northern white rhino, died after months of poor health. He was 45 years old and lived at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Now, there are only two female northern white rhinos left on Earth, Sudan’s daughter and granddaughter. Witnessing a major mammal species become extinct before our very
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