The first tests to reveal artificially modified DNA in Mexican corn have been attacked in the magazine Nature, which reported the original findings and now has published a paper disputing them. The original study by Ignacio Chapela and David Quist, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, sparked serious concern among environmentalists when it was published in Nature last November. (See “GM Strains Found in Mexican Corn Plantings”—EcoAméricas October 2001.) It also prompted calls for a ban on corn imports from the United States. According to Chapela and Quist, transgenes from genetically modified corn from the United States were present in grains taken from 13 of 22 fields in the southwestern state of Oaxaca, despite Mexico’s ban on the sowing of transgenic maize. The...
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Brazil’s environmental-enforcement agency (Ibama) has persuaded the European Union and the United States to hold Brazilian mahogany in their ports until Brazil’s courts determine whether the wood was legally cut. Ibama banned all logging, transport and export of mahogany last Oct. 19 after determining the wood was being cut not only in managed forests, as allowed, but also illegally in indigenous lands and protected forests. Nonetheless, from December to Feb., 18 timber operations in Pará and Paraná states won court decisions allowing them to export mahogany on grounds they had acquired it before the ban was announced. Ibama has secured court rulings overturning nine of those decisions based on evidence that the wood was illegally cut. It expects appeals courts to reverse the other...
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The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa) has approved an Argentine company’s plan to build a research reactor at Lucas Heights, Sydney. The move was welcomed by Argentina’s Institute of Applied Investigations (Invap), which in June 2000 won a $180 million contract to supply the small reactor to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization. Invap says the project will create jobs and set the stage for more such hi-tech projects. But the company’s project is not yet assured. Argentina’s Congress has yet to approve a nuclear-cooperation accord that Argentina and Australia signed last year to pave the way for the reactor project. Under the accord, Argentina agrees that if Australia asks, it will accept spent fuel from the reactor, vitrify...
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Paraguay lacks resources to protect natural areas, leaving its 22 national parks little more than lines on paper. But a four-year, United Nations-funded program is intended to help change that. Aimed at strengthening four selected parks “from the inside out,” the $8.9 million program, launched a year ago, aims to promote conservation through sustainable development efforts involving parkland residents. “The idea is not to make the traditional park, put up a fence and say, ‘Here’s the park,’ ” explains Francis Fragano of the Paraguayan Environment Secretariat (Seam), the program’s technical manager. “We want to have the [park] population’s participation.” Unlike U.S. parkland, which typically is publicly owned, much Paraguayan parkland is private property authorities have earmarked for protection. Initially, the program has focused on...
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