despoil

There is an economic aspect to the story in that greed is driving developers to despoil these areas because they see profit.

From Salon ● Mar. 2, 2023

He calmly rejects criticism that his vision would despoil the biosphere.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 1, 2023

The project would despoil a mostly pristine wilderness area.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 7, 2022

That measure is opposed by members of the local Mura tribe, who say mining would despoil the natural habitat upon which they depend.

From Reuters ● Mar. 23, 2022

The skull seemed to grimace in defiance, daring a stranger to despoil the royal treasures.

From "The Book of Three" by Lloyd Alexander

Unfortunately, your visit to Glacier NP was an example of exactly the kind of behavior that despoils and degrades our parks and wildernesses.

From New York Times ● Sep. 20, 2016

There are many benefits of not selling water in disposable bottles in national parks, including reducing trash at parks, carbon emissions and the litter that despoils our parks, landscape and waterways.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 24, 2015

Roger is jealous when Jane flirts with Manishewitz Jr.—“I thought you liked the crabs rangoon here!”—and despoils her new, Roger-free apartment accordingly.

From Slate ● May 14, 2012

Happily, the remedy to his dilemma comes to Nam in a dream: a blue-eyed American sergeant breaks into a bucolic toy community and despoils the place.

From Time Magazine Archive

And you, sad victims of an odious law!—you, whom a jesting world despoils and outrages!—you, whose labor has always been fruitless, and whose rest has been without hope,—take courage! your tears are numbered!

From What is Property? by P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph) Proudhon

Metaphors may have no place at a concentration camp, but it’s hard to look at this beautiful enclosed space and not see it, perversely, as the most despoiled of Edens.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2023

Too much of Seattle has been despoiled by the greed and power of developers.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 18, 2022

The natural environment with which Native Americans had established a harmonious and symbiotic relationship, was similarly despoiled by the twin logic of expropriation and colonization that spread under the logic of manifest destiny.

From Scientific American ● Aug. 10, 2021

We know we’ve despoiled the land, And the climate is way out of hand, But when we say, “Ow! Well, mea culpa, hey?”

From Washington Post ● Dec. 5, 2019

And all that beheld them in so pitiable a plight, gave them freely bread to eat, beer, and sometimes meat; for everywhere they told the tale how they had been despoiled by robbers.

From The Legend of Ulenspiegel, Volume I (of 2) And Lamme Goedzak, and their Adventures Heroical, Joyous and Glorious in the Land of Flanders and Elsewhere by Charles Th?odore Henri de Coster

Plastic, along with other litter, is also despoiling the landscape and polluting our waterways.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 7, 2023

The world is currently producing about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, with less than 10% of it being recycled, according to the UN Environment Programme, choking landfills and despoiling oceans.

From Reuters ● Nov. 12, 2023

Residents of Papua New Guinea have accused the mining company Rio Tinto of violating their human rights by despoiling the land where they live.

From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2022

Using strong words like decay, despoiling, vanishing, and violated, Johnson connects his argument to emotions—mostly fear—the audience would feel about such destruction of nature and values.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 21, 2021

“We are on the trail of a gang of international thieves who came to France for the purpose of despoiling our museums,” a police spokesman announced.

From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day