Despite environmental and public health concerns, Bolivia’s government is starting construction in March of a US$300 million nuclear research center, part of a plan to employ nuclear technologies for everything from energy to medicine and agriculture. The government set the stage for the project last October, when it signed a memorandum with Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear corporation, to build the research center. The project is one component of a larger, $2 billion plan to establish a series of nuclear facilities by 2025, including a research reactor to train personnel, an irradiation plant to kill bacteria in exported foods and a cyclotron for use in nuclear medicine. Ultimately, the government intends to build nuclear power plants with Russian and Argentine technology and expertise, which...
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On the last day of December 2015, Peru joined other countries in protecting the giant oceanic manta ray (Manta birostris) by prohibiting its capture, offloading, transportation, possession, use or sale. Under the new norm, any giant oceanic manta ray accidentally caught by a fishing vessel must be released. The long-lived ray, which reproduces slowly, measures an average of four to five meters (13 to 16 feet) and is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Publication last year of a photo of a huge ray caught by fishermen on Peru’s northern coast helped prompt calls for protection in the country. While marine mammals such as dolphins and whales are protected under Peruvian law, this is the first time Peru’s Ministry...
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Poopó, long Bolivia’s second largest lake, dried out almost completely in December, reduced to wetlands of under one square kilometer (0.39 sq mile) scattered on the floor of a sun-baked basin that once contained a 2,300-square-kilometer (888-sq-mile) aquatic expanse. A report issued on Dec. 17 by Carlos Ortuño, Bolivia’s Vice Minister of Water and Irrigation, blames climate change, growing farm-sector demand for water and problems associated with sedimentation of the Desaguadero River, which brings water to Poopó from Titicaca, Bolivia’s largest lake. Lake Poopó, located in Bolivia’s Oruro Department, has a long history of pollution problems caused largely by decades of disposal in the water body of untreated liquid waste from nearby mines. The resulting water-quality concerns prompted...
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The head of Peru’s forestry watchdog agency was removed from his post on Jan. 15, less than two months after the seizure of a large shipment of illegal timber from the country’s Amazon forests. Rolando Navarro, acting executive president of Osinfor, the forestry regulatory agency, had worked on that case and others. Officials gave no reason for his dismissal. Since becoming acting chief in 2012, Navarro had overseen efforts to work more closely with other government agencies, including the tax agency (Sunat), customs and environmental prosecutors. Accusations that fraudulent paperwork is used to “launder” illegal timber so it appears legitimate plague the industry, and government officials have linked illegal logging to corruption and organized crime. The nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency, which published a report on...
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