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Article: Entrepreneur seeks rights to guano-rich island.(Nation)
- Article from:
- The Washington Times (Washington, DC)
- Article date:
- August 6, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A bitter fight to excavate bird dung on a tiny uninhabited Caribbean island may be coming to an end with the discovery on the obscure U.S. territory of rare plants and a bird thought to be extinct.
Entrepreneur Bill Warren claims that the Department of the Interior has been trying to stop him from mining guano, which is used as fertilizer, on Navassa, an island about nine times larger than the Mall in Washington.
Mr. Warren is staking his claim to the lucrative petrified bird droppings under the little-known Guano Act of 1856, which provides that any uninhabited land containing guano and not under the control of another nation may be claimed in the ...