Colombia has established a helpline to give the public a way to report stranded, injured or dead manatees in the Magdalena River Valley, the country’s primary manatee habitat. The helpline—inaugurated on Sept. 7, International Manatee Day—connects callers to a response network called the Manatee Strandings Network of the Mid-Magdalena (RVM). The West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus manatus), the species found in Colombia and elsewhere in the Caribbean, has encountered growing threats in the Magdalena River Valley. Swamplands, one of their key habitats, are being rapidly converted into cattle pastures, cropland, and oil-palm plantations. Climate change is also costing them habitat, particularly amid the current El Niño weather pattern, producing lower water levels and thus a greater risk of manatee strandings. Other dangers facing the large aquatic animals are collisions with boats and entanglement in fishing nets. From Jan. 2010 to July 2023, the RVM responded to...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Nearly 260,000 people surveyed in Argentina want national lawmakers to make illegal land clearing and the intentional setting of forest fires punishable with prison time. The web-based survey was circulated in various Argentine cities from July 10 to Oct. 10 by the international environmental organization Greenpeace, and will be presented to lawmakers on Dec. 10, when a newly elected National Congress is slated to be seated. During 2006 and 2007, when fast-expanding production of transgenic soybeans was fueling extensive, largely legal land-clearing in Argentina, Greenpeace collected 1.2 million signatures to push for legislation aimed at setting limits on deforestation. The campaign helped pressure the country’s Congress to enact legislation in 2007 that ordered provincial governments to develop land-use plans designed to steward their forests and prohibit deforestation of woodlands with the highest conservation value. “The forest law is good and has produced results, but has not...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Honduran President Xiomara Castro this month became president pro-tempore of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN), a New York-based intergovernmental organization that uses advocacy and technical assistance to help developing countries derive economic benefit from preserving their woodlands. While in New York for a United Nations General Assembly meeting, Castro signed a memorandum of understanding confirming her starting in January in the rotating CfRN president pro-tempore role, which carries a two-year term. The appointment is seen as recognition of environmental-policy progress under Castro since she took office in January 2022. In a statement issued by the Honduran president’s office, Kevin Conrad, CfRN’s executive director, is quoted as praising Castro for strengthening Honduras’s commitment to woodland conservation. Her administration has followed through on promises to spend US$33 million annually on forest protection, setting 10% of that funding aside to underwrite woodland enforcement units drawn from...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Of the 177 murders of environmental and land-rights defenders worldwide last year, 155 occurred in Latin America, according to the latest annual report by Global Witness, a London-based nonprofit. The report, the 11th such annual accounting, was issued in September by Global Witness. It says environmental and land-rights defenders globally were slain at a rate of one every two days in 2022, the same rate as in 2021. The 2022 total, based on the latest figures available, is below the record 200 defenders reported slain in 2021, but does not signify the situation has significantly improved, Global Witness says. “The worsening climate crisis and the ever-increasing demand for agricultural commodities, fuel and minerals will only intensify the pressure on the environment and those who risk their lives to defend it,” the report says. In 2022, Latin America accounted for an increased percentage of such worldwide activist...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
