A Chilean judge investigating the illegal cutting and trade of threatened alerce trees ordered the detention of four people this month, among them the mayor of a town in the south of the country. The alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides) is one of the world’s oldest living trees—it can survive more than 3,600 years—and is similar in appearance to the giant sequoia of the U.S. state of California, in some cases growing 150 feet high and 15 feet in diameter. Alerces won protected status in Chile in 1976, when the government declared the majestic trees a national monument. Trade in alerce wood also is prohibited internationally under the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites). The four arrests were ordered May 9 by...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
A private Brazilian railway has been fined US$4 million and could face US$6 million in further penalties if it fails to repair environmental damage caused by a tank-car derailment last month that sent diesel oil into a federal mangrove reserve. Central Atlantic Railway (FCA) was shipping the oil up the coast from a Rio de Janeiro refinery to the city of Campos when the derailment occurred. The spill, involving 16,600 gallons (63,000 liters) of diesel oil, is still under investigation. Four cars in the 38-car train overturned in an area where the track runs parallel to a tributary of the Caceribu River. Diesel fuel spilled into the tributary and floated to the Caceribu, where FCA emergency teams set containment booms downstream...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Guayaquil Attorney Ana Albán Mora last month became Ecuador’s fifth environment minister in little over two years, taking her post amid the government change-over that followed the April 20 congressional vote removing former Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutiérrez from office. Albán, 37, worked previously as a legal advisor to Ecuador’s Business Council for Sustainable Development and has served as executive director of the Guayaquil chapter of Nature Foundation, a leading Ecuadorian environmental group. She replaces Juan Carlos Camacho, who had served just two months as minister. Gutiérrez was removed from office amid a political crisis set off last December, when his allies in Congress engineered the wholesale substitution of high-level judges with magistrates more agreeable to them. Congress designated Gutiérrez’s vice president, Alfredo Palacio...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Isidro Baldenegro says he wasn’t looking for fame. The 38-year-old member of Mexico’s indigenous Tarahumara people says it is hard to find words to describe his reactions last month on receiving the 2005 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America. Calling the award “a miracle,” Baldenegro says it presents “new opportunities” to advance his campaign to protect old-growth forests from destructive logging in the northern Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico’s Chihuahua state. Goldman prizes are awarded annually to an individual in each of the world’s six continental regions who has made exemplary contributions to environmental protection. This year’s winner for Central and South America was José Andrés Tamayo Cortez, 47, a Catholic priest who has led campaigns against unfettered logging in the ecologically...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
