Brazil’s Congress has passed a controversial bill giving licensing power over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to a pro-GMO technical body. The legislation opens the door permanently to transgenic farming in Brazil by allowing the sale of gene-altered seeds. Many in the legislative and executive branches objected to the measure because it runs counter to an earlier version of the bill, proposed by the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that would have put final licensing decisions in the hands of the Environment Ministry and two other ministries. But this month the amended bill won final approval by a wide margin in the lower house of Congress, and the president is expected to meet a 45-day deadline for signing it. The...
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Plans by Brazilian oil company Petrobras’ to start building a road this month in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park have drawn criticism from scientists around the world. The 12- to 14-month project is part of Petrobras’ effort to tap oil reserves in Block 31, a concession area in the northeast Ecuadorian Amazon province of Orellana. Some 70% of the 500,000-acre (200,000-ha) area is in Yasuní Park, known for its copious plant and animal life as well as its indigenous huaorani Kawimen people. Petrobras and government officials insist that the road would only be open to oil-project personnel and would not be linked to the national road system. But the plan still has drawn heavy criticism from scientists who argue the road will...
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A spike in poaching and ongoing problems with illegal logging have prompted the Peruvian government to boost conservation of the vicuña as well as timber, both of which appear on the national seal. A public-awareness campaign launched Feb. 14 urges Peruvians to “protect your identity” in the face of poaching and deforestation. Officials estimate vicuña poaching has cost US$13 million in the past decade in lost sales and tax revenues. Losses from illegal logging are harder to tally, but the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) estimates the country loses US$8.5 million a year in tax revenue alone. Thanks to better management by highland communities that own land where vicuñas range, Peru’s population of the wild camelid has recovered since the 1980s, when it...
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Rodolfo Montiel, the Mexican forest-conservation activist who was jailed on drug and weapons charges in 1999 and then released in 2001 amid an international outcry, once again faces legal troubles. Four years after Mexican President Vicente Fox ordered his release, Montiel and 15 other farmers who opposed destructive logging in the mountains of southern Guerrero state have been indicted in the 1998 murder of Abel Bautista, the 16-year-old son of a logging contractor working in the area. All those charged in the case are former members of the Campesino Environmentalist Organization of the Sierra of Petatlán and Cocuya de Catalán (Ocesp), an anti-logging group. Only one of them, former Ocesp Secretary Felipe Arreaga, has been arrested. Declared a prisoner of conscience...
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Environmentalists in the Amazon frequently assert that forest conservation must go hand in hand with sustainable-development initiatives for poor settlers. Indeed, they often place the well-being of people before that of trees—a ranking some green advocates in industrialized countries find hard to accept, given the rapid destruction of the world’s largest tropical forest. Chico Mendes, who became the first widely known rainforest martyr following his murder in 1988, was no exception in this regard. His struggle against large landowners in the western Amazon state of Acre was primarily a fight for the survival of his fellow rubber tappers, who wanted to keep the forest intact mainly so they could continue to make a living from it. Dorothy Stang, the American-born nun...
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