Argentina’s tortuous campaign to create a national park on its part of the Chaco, the vast subtropical lowland that also stretches into Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, has reached a successful conclusion. The Chaco province Court of Appeals last month awarded the provincial government possession of 130,000 hectares (321,000 acres) of former ranchland in what is called El Impenetrable, a rugged, dry-forest portion of the Chaco located 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) north of Buenos Aires. Last month’s ruling allowed Chaco province Governor Domingo Peppo on April 20 to sign the transfer of the land, once part of a large ranch called La Fidelidad, to Argentina’s National Parks Administration (APN). Argentina’s Congress voted to confer national park status on the property in 2014, but parks personnel...
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New research calculates that Brazil’s Cerrado, a sprawling, wooded savannah, will lose one-third of its remaining vegetation cover by 2050, a loss “set to trigger a [plant] extinction episode of global significance.” Entitled “Moment of Truth for the Cerrado Hotspot,” the study was published in March in the scientific journal Nature, Ecology & Evolution. It says that unless action is taken, Brazil’s second-largest biome stands to lose 31% to 34% of its remaining wood and grass vegetation and drive 480 endemic plant species to extinction by 2050. The study, involving computer-generated spatial modeling of land-use changes and large databases on the conservation status of 4,800 endemic plant species, cites agribusiness expansion into the poorly protected Cerrado as the greatest threat. It says...
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Chile was the Latin American country best positioned to handle the challenges of climate change as of 2015, according to the ND-GAIN Country Index, a report issued as part of Notre Dame University’s Environmental Change Initiative. The index, published this January and based on data from 2015, ranks 181 countries based on an assessment of their vulnerability to climate change and their “readiness to improve resilience.” The results were combined to produce a single numerical score reflecting each country’s ability to weather “climate change and other global challenges,” the report says—the higher the score the better. The objective is to “help private businesses and the public sector prioritize investment to achieve a more efficient answer to global challenges.” Of the 181 nations studied...
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A bill filed recently by the administration of Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez would establish prison terms of up to 12 years for environmental crimes. The legislation, now before the country’s congress, would address a longstanding problem for Uruguayan authorities: although those responsible for environmental damage can be fined, current law does not provide a basis for criminal prosecution. During the bill’s unveiling in February, Eneida De León, who heads Uruguay’s Ministry of Housing, Land Management and Environment (Mvotma), said pollution issues have created pressure that her ministry needs solid legal footing to address. Said De León: “We have had a legal vacuum, which was real, that environmental crimes were a subject that needed definition, and it is necessary to incorporate them into our legal system...
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