Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela has signed legislation to protect 85,652 hectares (211,651 acres) of wetlands stretching southeast along the Pacific coast from Panama City to a point just short of the border of Darien Province—an area considered one of the world’s most significant nesting and feeding grounds for migratory birds. “This law marks the accomplishment of one of our goals ... highlighting the environment,” Varela said at a Feb. 2 ceremony to mark the signing of the bill. In that ceremony, he praised civil society groups for their efforts to prevent “the destruction of the internationally important site.” The area, known as the Panama Bay Wildlife Refuge, encompasses mud flats and mangrove forests that play host every fall to an estimated 2 million shorebirds...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Mexico’s environmental prosecutor (Profepa) has shut down a sprawling project to build a commercial exhibition center south of Cancún on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. The move on Jan. 26 to halt work on the complex, called Dragon Mart Cancún, came after a judge rejected the developers’ appeal of rulings that Profepa made last year. Profepa said that the developers of the 557-hectare (1,376-acre) site had failed to prepare a federal environmental impact statement or seek authorization for a change in forest land-use, as the agency had demanded. Nor had the company, Real Estate Dragon Mart Cancún, presented a plan to restore a deforested portion of the site. The developers had argued that they did have the necessary environmental permits from state authorities in...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
A splintered stub is all that remains of a keel-billed toucan’s colorful top beak after a group of Costa Rican teenagers brutally beat the bird with sticks and left it for dead. A disturbing photo of the mutilated toucan has gone viral, spurring many animal rights groups abroad to call for the perpetrators’ arrest; but because of a loophole in Costa Rican law, the animal’s abusers will never be charged for their crimes. Seeking to protect farm workers from prosecution for such common practices as using cattle prods and lassos, Costa Rica decriminalized animal cruelty in 2002. But the new law unintentionally made it close to impossible to prosecute animal abuse properly. As a result, the worst punishment for even the most heinous acts...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Brazil ranks 16th among the 20 countries that dump the most plastic waste into the world’s oceans, and unless it improves its solid waste management, it could move up to 15th place in another decade. Altogether, about 8 million metric tons of plastic were allowed to enter the oceans in 2010, according to a new study by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California—Santa Barbara. That’s equivalent to the weight of the global tuna catch, or five trash bags of plastic for every foot of coastline in the world, according to the study’s authors. “We’re taking tuna out and putting plastic in,” Kara Lavender Law, research professor of oceanography and chief scientist at the Sea Education Association, said...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
