The arrest this month of 17 members of an alleged illegal logging ring—including a government forestry official—underscores persistent problems with enforcement of Peru’s forestry laws. The three-state sweep on July 12 by police and prosecutors snagged what officials described as a family-run organization that operated a sawmill and included loggers, truck drivers, an accountant, an administrator and a person whose job was to pay off public officials. The arrested forestry official, José Luis Crispín Llanco, was the general administrator of the Forest and Wildlife Technical Administration, the National Forest and Wildlife Service (Serfor) office for Peru’s central Amazon. Police said the logging group bribed national and regional government officials to obtain fraudulent paperwork that made timber appear legal by the time...
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Burgeoning beaver populations on the Argentine portion of the island of Tierra del Fuego have built some 70,000 dams, a new study has found. The University of Buenos Aires study, based partly on analysis of satellite images, found that if the area’s beaver dams were placed end to end, they would extend 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles). Beavers were introduced in Argentina’s portion of Tierra del Fuego in 1946, starting with 25 breeding pairs flown in from Canada. The goal was to develop a fur industry in Argentina, but once in the wild their population grew relentlessly because, unlike in Canada and the United States, they had no natural predators. Today, the number of beavers in the Argentine and Chilean portions of Tierra del Fuego is...
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The essential facts about the controversial hydroelectric project described in hearings this month in the Argentine Congress are these: US$4.7 billion for 1,310 megawatts from two large dams on a river that flows to the Atlantic from an Andean national park. Cabinet officials, legislators, scientists, non-governmental group leaders and others attended the hearings, conducted July 20 and 21 to discuss potential impacts of the twin-dam project proposed for the 385-kilometer (240-mile) Santa Cruz River in Argentine Patagonia. Described as “historic” on account of the unprecedented venue and high-level attendees, the hearings had been ordered by the Argentina Supreme Court, which in December ruled that work on the dams could not begin until such an airing occurred. Following comments by...
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Debate in Bolivia about energy exploration in protected areas has abounded since Bolivian President Evo Morales signed a decree in 2015 authorizing the practice. In recent months a prime focus of that debate has been southern Bolivia’s Tariquía National Flora and Fauna Reserve. Last April, dozens of subsistence farmers who live in the reserve staged a 110-kilometer (68-mile), four-day protest march to the city of Tarija to denounce oil and gas exploration in their territory. Gaining adherents along the way, their numbers swelled in the march’s final stage, culminating in a large demonstration in the principal plaza of Tarija, capital of the local-governmental department that includes the 246,000-hectare (950-sq-mile) protected area. “In Tariquía there are not only animals...
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