That made them ideal for the exciting work to which they seemed born: plunging into tropical forests on the run, often half a step ahead of the chain saws, to take stock of the tropics' rapidly disappearing biological riches.

Instead of turning its natural patrimony into a desolation, it could be harvesting its biological riches at a profit.

Smaller than California and bereft of many natural resources, the archipelago nation sees the deep as a repository of biological and mineral riches and is making preparations to mine them both.

He proposed the establishment of a National Biological Survey, which would provide an inventory of the nation's biological riches.

Among the myriad reasons for the accelerating rate of extinction is that most American refuges were set aside for reasons other than preserving the nation's biological riches.

More recently, recognizing what's been lost, we've tried to preserve a few remnants of natural landscape, a small portion of the biological riches that once graced the planet, by creating protected areas: parks and reserves.

And you're never too far from the 12, 950-sq-km Desierto Sonorense, an ecological treasure of biological riches.

FEW places outside the tropical rain forests contain such a wealth of biological riches as a certain plot of Florida Panhandle not far from here.

They also believe that the world's forests harbor untold billions of dollars worth of biological riches that could be exploited for pharmaceuticals and other products without harming the environment.

Experts say the abyss turns out to be riddled with mineral, biological and intellectual riches and will probably divulge more surprises in the decades ahead.