A new label has begun appearing on certain food packaging in Montevideo, Uruguay stores: a white “T” against a black background along with the words, “Contains genetically modified organisms.” Montevideo is in the middle of a six-month staging period leading to the start of enforcement on Aug. 6 of a new municipal law requiring that food products containing gene-altered ingredients (GMOs) be labeled accordingly by manufacturers and importers. Beginning then, authorities say, products that contain transgenic ingredients but lack the required label will be ordered off the shelves until the packaging is modified in line with the law. The label must appear on the principal side of the product, and its dimensions must conform to a formula based on the size of the...
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Tourism to protected areas in Peru was worth at least US$723 million to local economies in 2017 and created some 36,000 jobs, according to a new report by the nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based Conservation Strategy Fund. An estimated $165 million of the amount generated went directly to wages and other household income, says the fund, which promotes conservation economics as a means of furthering ecosystem protection and community development. The study, released in March, drew on data from five protected areas representing different types of ecosystems and tourism development, as well as a sixth tourism site that has been proposed for protective status. The data were then used to estimate income for 34 other protected areas in Peru’s national system, using tourism figures for...
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Is there any hope left for the vaquita marina? As the world’s smallest porpoise has hurtled towards extinction, some scientists and activists have insisted a solution still can be found, while others have given up hope, shifting their attention to ensuring other species don’t meet a similar fate. The vaquita, which inhabits the upper Gulf of California in northwestern Mexico, was first described in the scientific literature in 1958. Worries about declining vaquita numbers became acute in the 1990s, mainly due to concern about the marine mammals getting trapped in gillnets spread for shrimp. In more recent years concern has focused on vaquita deaths caused in the illegal pursuit of totoaba fish, which fetch high prices on account of the belief in China that their...
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