Tag Archives: Panama

“Follow me,” Nando said. “I know where it lives.” It was late morning, hot, humid and quiet. Shafts of sunlight cut through the jungle as we followed a path through the latticed shade. A few hundred yards away, gigantic cargo ships stacked with containers chugged along the Panama Canal. But that was another world. Where we were walking was a …

When lightning strikes a tree in the tropics, the whole forest explodes. “At their most extreme, it kind of looks like a bomb went off,” said Evan Gora, a forest ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. Dozens of trees around the one that was struck are electrocuted. Within months, a sizable circle of forest can …

The cost of using the Panama Canal has risen in recent years — excessively so, President Trump has asserted. The canal operator says droughts, investments in upgrades and sheer demand are among the reasons. But if Mr. Trump wrests lower canal fees out of Panama, American consumers may not feel much difference, because canal costs make up only a small …

Night fell as the two scientists got to work, unfurling long nets off the end of their boat. The jungle struck up its evening symphony: the sweet chittering of insects, the distant bellowing of monkeys, the occasional screech of a kite. Crocodiles lounged in the shallows, their eyes glinting when headlamps were shined their way. Across the water, cargo ships …