A Mexican watchdog agency has launched administrative proceedings alleging that 28 officials with the Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat (Semarnat) issued illicit hunting licenses and that one of them, along with a 29th Semarnat official, approved the illegal importation of dolphins.

The federal Public Function Secretariat (SFP) initiated the bulk of the proceedings—those concerning the hunting licenses—late last month. Among those charged is Raúl Arriaga, the former second in command at Semarnat, Mexico’s lead environmental agency.

Then early this month, the SFP launched proceedings in the dolphin-importation case against Arriaga, formerly Semarnat’s undersecretary for management of environmental protection, and Antonio Gómez, the agency’s former health-division director.

SFP attorneys say their investigations focused on violations of environmental laws and did not address bribery, which lies outside their agency’s jurisdiction. But the charges nevertheless leave the impression of widespread wrongdoing within Semarnat.

Víctor Lichtinger, formerly the head of Semarnat, frequently spoke out against internal corruption and was said to be at odds with Arriaga. Lichtinger, Arriaga and other top Semarnat officials were ousted by President Vicente Fox in September as part of a broad Cabinet shakeup aimed at restoring political momentum to the struggling administration.

Praise from environmentalists

Green advocates have been critical of the Fox administration’s environmental record, saying Semarnat’s new leadership appears to favor development over conservation. But they applaud the government for initiating the SFP proceedings, known as administrative trials. “We welcome the Mexican government’s willingness to pursue these environmental crimes,” says Bettina Bugeda, Latin America director of the U.S. group International Fund for Animal Welfare. “This is an important step forward.”

Arriaga and 27 other current and former Semarnat officials were charged in late January with illegally issuing dozens of hunting permits to private individuals and hunting clubs.

The SFP alleges that over the past three years, the officials used a no-longer-extant land-development law as a basis for granting the permits, which they awarded without seeking permission from affected landowners. The agency says receipts for 3.1 million pesos (US$280,000) that should have been collected for the permits were not filed with Semarnat, indicating the issuers either didn’t charge for the permits or pocketed the money.

Apart from Arriaga, three other former high-ranking Semarnat officials are being tried in connection with the illegal hunting licenses: Fernando Clemente Sánchez, Eleazar Loa and José María Reyes—the former division directors, respectively, of Wildlife; Public Services and Promotions; and Regional Development and Field Operations.

The charges, which stem from an internal audit ordered by then-Secretary Lichtinger, concern at least 36 permits issued since the Fox administration took office in Dec. 2000. All the accused have maintained silence except for Luís Alfredo Rangel, a Semarnat official in the state of Durango who denies wrongdoing. “We just served as a connecting agency, as a paperwork window,” he has been quoted as saying.

Solomon Islands dolphins

The animal-importation proceedings, being brought against Arriaga and Gómez, concern the shipment to Mexico of 33 dolphins from the Solomon Islands in July of last year. The two are charged with violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) by allowing the dolphins to be imported from a non-Cites member country and to be classified as Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) when in fact they were Indian Ocean Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus), a distinct species and one not found in Mexico.

The dolphins were imported by Propac Cancún, a private company that runs five so-called swim-with-the-dolphins facilities in Mexico’s Quintana Roo state. Visitors pay as much as 800 pesos ($72) to swim in a tank containing dolphins. Questions about the operation were brought to the SFP’s attention by green groups including IFAW, Conservation of Marine Mammals of Mexico and the Quintana Roo Animal Protection Society.

“The authorities continue concealing these types of irregularities,” says Sara Rincón, president of the Quintana Roo Animal Protection Society. She adds that Cites has been further violated because the dolphins have been held in substandard tanks.

Semarnat has announced plans to move the 28 remaining dolphins (five reportedly died in transit) to an “adequate” site, and says it is working on a plan for administering the country’s dolphin facilities. Propac, which is under separate investigation by a Quintana Roo court, could not be reached for comment.

According to the group Marine Mammals Conservation of Mexico, some 180 dolphins are held in Mexico for commercial purposes.