Clean air belies Covid-19’s environmental downside

In Central America, fires proliferated as the pandemic caused a lull in enforcement. (Photo by Melvin Merida)

In Honduras, fires have torched forests while rangers shelter to avoid contracting Covid-19. In Mexico, fishers illegally ply the habitat of the endangered vaquita porpoise, no longer impeded by environmental patrols. And in Guatemala, villagers opposing mining projects have had to suspend “resistance camps” they have maintained at mine entrances for years. In much of Latin America, the coronavirus lockdown has undermined the ability of enforcement officials, activists and communities to protect the environment. Clear skies and lower emissions may point to collateral benefits of global paralysis, experts say, but they also belie risks. “Maybe nature is resting, but the delinquents are not,” says Jean Paul Geoffroy, who leads a campaign by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a U.S.-based nonprofit, to protect the vaquita (Phocoena sinus) in its sole habitat in the Upper Gulf of California. From Mexico to Brazil, many of the rural and indigenous communities crucial to... Read more →