A pair of salmon farming companies in Chile have agreed to relocate nine concessions they have operated inside or adjacent to national parks in the country’s southern regions of Aysén and Magallanes. Pressed by the government of Chilean President Gabriel Boric, the companies, AquaChile and Cooke Aquaculture, signed an agreement that authorities said would end salmon farming in three national parks—Laguna San Rafael, Magdalena Island and Bernardo O’Higgins. “This protocol agreement is a demonstration we can sit at the same table to work together,” said Chilean Environment Minister Maisa Rojas, while announcing the accord on Dec. 19. “As a country, we need the salmon industry to take decisive steps toward sustainability.” The agreement came seven months after Chile’s Congress failed to approve proposed restrictions on aquaculture in protected areas as part of a biodiversity law it enacted last year. Industry critics point out that farmed salmon’s feed and excrement...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Environmental enforcement suffered under ultra-right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president from Jan. 1, 2019 to Dec. 31, 2022. It improved markedly after the Jan. 1, 2023 inauguration of his left-leaning successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Until last month, that is. Since Jan. 2, 2024, most federal employees who perform in-field environmental enforcement in Brazil have staged a partial work stoppage. Their protest, aimed at improving pay, has caused a precipitous decline in the issuance of fines to those who trespass on Indigenous lands and other federally protected areas to engage in illegal activities ranging from logging to mining. The National Association of Environmental Career Specialists (Ascema Nacional), which represents all 4,900 federal environmental employees, said this month that the slowdown would likely last at least until the first week of March. Some 700 of these employees conduct on-the-ground policing for Ibama, the enforcement...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
With help from European zoologists, groundwork is being laid to reintroduce South America’s giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) in the wild in Argentina, where for decades it has been considered extinct. In January, a breeding pair of the large aquatic predators was transported from Germany’s Zoo Halle to the Iberá Wetlands in northeast Argentina, where the nonprofit Rewilding Argentina has been reintroducing wildlife that for decades has been locally extinct. As of late February, the two animals were completing a quarantine period before they would be moved to a giant enclosure of wetland property where experts hope they will eventually be released into the wild with their offspring. Their arrival brings to eight the number of giant otters in captivity at the site—three of them donated since 2019 by zoos in Denmark, Hungary, and Sweden, and three born at Rewilding Argentina’s Iberá Wetlands site. The giant otter is a carnivore...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
From December to April, hundreds of Johngarthia lagostoma land crabs make their way down from the mountains of Brazil’s Trindade Island, located 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) off the country’s coast. After reaching the beaches, they mate, releasing their larvae into the sea. When they become young crabs, they return to shore and clamber to the highest parts of the island to make their homes, some reaching elevations of 600 meters (2,000 feet) above sea level. Later as adults, they return to the beaches where they were born, and the process begins anew. Johngarthia lagostoma crabs, known in Brazil as caranguejo amarelo, or yellow crab, are found on only four islands in the world—Ascension Island, the British overseas territory located in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, and three Brazilian islands. Their Brazilian habitat is on Trindade and the islands of Fernando de Noronha and Atol das Rocas. Though...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
