In an article entitled "Mining the Boreal North," American Scientist for March-April presents information so interesting that I shouldn't have missed mentioning it in last quarter's column. It describes the conflict between the native Sami of Scandinavia and Swedish timber companies whose removal of older spruce forest deprived reindeer of the pendulous lichen which provided the latter with winter food. It also tells how smoke from smelters "contained heavy metals such as cadmium and lead, which were captured by lichen and then accumulated in reindeer and the people who ate them."
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