Mexico’s government has banned all shark tourism-related activities in the waters around Guadalupe Island, a biosphere reserve off the coast of Baja California. Under a new management plan for the protected area published in January, cage diving to observe great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) will no longer be allowed due to concern about risks to sharks and tourists alike. “Bad practices have been observed between 2016 and 2021,” Mexico’s environment ministry said. They “have put the white sharks at risk as well as the integrity of tourists and visitors.” Great white sharks, which are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), congregate from July to December in a 6.75-square-kilometer (2.6-sq-mile) feeding ground northeast of the island. Their predictable presence and the excellent visibility in the waters of the feeding ground gave rise to businesses that, starting in 2001...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
On March 16, Mauricio Álvarez, director of the nonprofit Uruguayan group Conservation of Native Species (Coendú), received a text from Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou. “Mauricio, the animals won’t be sacrificed,” the text read. It was welcome news to Álvarez because 48 hours earlier, the government had announced that the survivors among more than 270 wild animals that had been seized from traffickers would be euthanized due to concern about bird flu and other infections. The seizure occurred on March 8, when customs officials inspecting a car found native and exotic reptiles and birds. In the car owner’s Montevideo home they found dozens more animals, many of them from Brazil, northern Argentina and Paraguay. In all there were 272 animals, including 60 turquoise-fronted parrots (Amazona aestiva), 21 red tegu lizards (Salvator rufescens), and 36 Chaco tortoises (Chelonoidis chilensis). The birds all tested negative for H5N1 influenza, or bird flu...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Ecuadorian elections officials are preparing to schedule a referendum on whether metals mining should be allowed in a rural portion of the Quito municipal district that forms part of the prized Chocó bioregion. The Chocó extends from southeastern Panama through western Colombia and into northwest Ecuador, tracing a corridor between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains. A portion of the Ecuadorian Chocó that is located in Pichincha province has been declared a Unesco biosphere reserve, with a substantial part of this reserve lying within the Quito district boundaries. It is this municipal-district portion of the Chocó-Andino de Pichincha Biosphere Reserve, located an hour’s drive northwest of the Ecuadorian capital, that will be subject to the referendum, whose results will be binding. A date for the vote has yet to be announced. The area at issue in the planned referendum covers 124,296 hectares (307,142 acres) of highly biodiverse...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Climate issues, economic development and security were on the agenda on March 21, when President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hosted U.S. Climate envoy John Kerry in the wind-rich Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca state, Mexico. But some 3,000 protestors from 11 indigenous organizations gathered in advance to denounce plans for Mexico and the United States to develop wind farms on the isthmus, Mexico’s narrowest point between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The projects, demonstrators said, would “amputate” their territory and open the door to “neocolonialism.” President López Obrador’s plans for the isthmus include 10 industrial parks intended to benefit from use of the region as a rail and road connection between the Atlantic and Pacific. In February he said four of the parks would be wind farms developed with investment participation by the U.S. government. The vision has prompted backlash from Indigenous groups. “[López] Obrador has a double discourse...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Green advocates are denouncing a Feb. 16 decree issued last month by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that reconstitutes the National Environment Council (Conama), the country’s main environmental policy-making body. They say the overhaul does not give them and other civil-society participants—those representing scientific entities, indigenous associations, rural-workers groups and unions—sufficient clout on the council. That influence had been whittled down considerably by Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, whose overhaul of Conama in 2019 gave 52% of voting seats to the federal government and business sector, and only 17% to civil-society representatives. (See "Green advocates lose clout on Brazil policy board" —EcoAméricas, June 2019.) Lula immediately ordered a restructuring of Conama when he took office Jan. 1, 2023. His Feb. 16 decree, endorsed by Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
