Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff issued a series of eco-friendly decrees on June 5, World Environment Day, but didn’t receive strong applause from green advocates on account of her May 25 signing of controversial legislation revising the country’s Forest Code. (See related story—this issue.) The highest-profile decree implements a 2010 law requiring that sustainability criteria be used in awarding federal contracts for goods and services and sets forth the necessary standards for agencies to follow. “By including sustainability criteria in contracts, federal bodies can use their purchasing power to encourage companies bidding on those contracts to offer more sustainable goods and services,” says Ana Maria Neto, director of the Environment Ministry’s Department of Consumer Sustainability. “Federal purchases of goods and services account for...
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At an estimated century of age, the giant tortoise and Galápagos Islands icon known as Lonesome George died this month of natural causes. George had been an international conservation celebrity since he was found on Pinta Island in 1972. Until then, it was thought that his subspecies, Geochelone nigra abingdoni, had been extinct. Though scientists attempted to breed George with females of a different subspecies, he died on June 24 without leaving descendants. His death reduces the number of giant-tortoise subspecies on the Galápagos from 11 to 10. After he was discovered 40 years ago, the 200-pound tortoise was moved to Puerto Ayora, on Santa Cruz Island, and became an internationally known mascot of sorts for Galápagos National Park’s giant-tortoise captive breeding...
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Concerns about uncontrolled coastal growth are fueling debate in Uruguay over a government plan to build a bridge across the mouth of Garzón Lagoon, which is part of this country’s only United Nations-declared biosphere reserve and a candidate for inclusion in Uruguay’s National Protected Areas System. For 60 years an unfinished bridge has stood about three kilometers (1.9 miles) from the seaward end of the lagoon, which is on the border of Maldonado and Rocha departments 190 kilometers (119 miles) east of Montevideo. Meanwhile, small three-car ferries criticized as slow and unreliable have carried vehicles between Maldonado on the lagoon’s western bank and Rocha on the eastern side at a rate of 30,000 a year, according to an estimate made in 2009. Though...
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Legislation declaring a road or rail right-of-way through Peruvian rainforest to be in the “national interest” cleared a congressional-committee hurdle this month, but is drawing fire from environmentalists and indigenous groups. The route would link two communities along the Brazilian border—Puerto Esperanza, an isolated town in the eastern department of Ucayali, and Iñapari, located on the Interoceanic Highway in the neighboring southeastern department of Madre de Dios. President Ollanta Humala has not weighed in on the proposal, which has been pushed unsuccessfully in the past. The current measure was introduced in Congress shortly before Humala visited Puerto Esperanza in December 2011 and pledged to establish an “air bridge” of subsidized flights between the town of about 1,000 people and Pucallpa, the...
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