Discovery

Great Wall is disappearing: Around 30 percent of China’s Ming-era Great Wall has disappeared over time as adverse natural conditions and reckless human activities — including stealing the bricks to build houses — erode the UNESCO World Heritage site, state media reported.

The Great Wall is not a single unbroken structure but stretches for thousands of kms in sections, from Shanhaiguan on the east coast to Jiayuguan in the windswept sands on the edge of the Gobi desert.

In places it is so dilapidated that estimates of its total length vary from 9,000 to 21,000 kms (5,600 to 13,000 miles), depending on whether missing sections are included. Despite its length it is not, as is sometimes claimed, visible from space.

Construction first begun in the third century BC, but nearly 6,300 kms were built in the Ming Dynasty of 1368-1644, including the much-visited sectors north of the capital Beijing.

Of that, 1,962 kms has melted away over the centuries, the Beijing Times reported.

Some of the construction weathered away, while plants growing in the walls have accelerated the decay, said the report Sunday, citing a survey last year by the Great Wall of China Society.

“Even though some of the walls are built of bricks and stones, they cannot withstand the perennial exposure to wind and rain,” the paper quoted Dong Yaohui, a vice president of the society, as saying.

“Many towers are becoming increasingly shaky and may collapse in a single rain storm in summer.” (AFP)

Brazil to open 1st sanctuary: Brazil to open 1st sanctuary: Brazil will soon open Latin America’s first elephant sanctuary, and its three initial residents will be retired circus animals in need of a safe haven, a report said Sunday.

“The idea is to build an establishment like the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee in the United States,” Junia Machado, president of the Santuario de Elefantes Brasil group that is behind the project, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper.

The facility is due to open by next year and will be in Mato Grosso state in the western cental part of the country, close to soyfields, cattle ranches and a national park.

Machado’s group has purchased a property of about 1,100 hectares (2,700 acres) in a forested area near fields and water sources, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Chapada dos Guimaraes tourist park.

Three female elephants will be the sanctuary’s first guests, including Ramba, a 50-year-old Asian elephant that spent decades working in circuses in Argentina and Chile.

Her background left her with scars, abscesses and a chronic renal problem.

The other two creatures, Guida and