At a time when social media has been used all too often as a force for ill, a 25-year-old French tourist visiting Bolivia has provided a reminder of digital networking’s constructive power. In March, French environmental activist Alexis Dessard recruited 250 people in the Bolivian department of Potosí to collect 10 tons of plastic waste at the Train Cemetery in Uyuni, a popular tourist site containing abandoned mining-industry rolling stock. Then Dessard moved on to the city of Oruro and put out a call for volunteers to engage in the cleanup of nearby Lake Uru Uru, which sits 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) above sea level. The lake, declared a Ramsar Convention wetland of international importance in 2002 due to its endemic fauna, has been polluted by growing volumes of plastic waste discarded by local communities and carried into the water body by rivers and streams. Dessard’s call...
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Forest fires burned in 21 of Mexico’s 32 states in April, affecting over 20,583 hectares (50,862 acres) of the country’s woodlands amid a prolonged drought that spanned the first four months of the year. As of April 18, there were 106 active forest fires in Mexico, according to Mexico’s National Forestry Commission (Conafor). Of these, 14 burned in 11 of the country’s natural protected areas, which include national parks and other government-designated conservation lands. Conafor reports a total of 3,735 forest fires from the start of the year through April 15, telling EcoAméricas they collectively affected over 127,000 hectares (313,824 acres) of woodlands nationwide. That ranks as the fourth highest number of fires for the January-through-April period since 1998, Conafor says. The blazes occurred against a backdrop of unusually high temperatures and scant rainfall in the 2020-21 dry season, a period that typically lasts from November through...
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A new species of harlequin frog living in the mountains of eastern Panama has been scientifically described, generating excitement at an otherwise sobering time in which harlequin frogs are rapidly disappearing. The species—a small frog whose dorsal coloration comprises irregular dark-brown bands and blotches against green or yellow—had been observed and collected in the past, but was thought to be related to other species. The events that led to it being described as a new species began in the Darién Gap jungle in April 2020, when a corporal with Panama’s National Border Service (Senafront) spotted one of the frogs. The officer published a photo of it on the iNaturalist Web platform as part of the Naturalist Challenge, a government initiative aimed at encouraging citizens to capture images of wildlife in the country. Experts who viewed the image struggled to identify the frog. One of them—Panamanian biologist...
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At the request of a Supreme Court justice, Brazilian government authorities are verifying a BBC Brasil documentary’s finding that land grabbers have been using Facebook to illegally peddle publicly owned Amazon rainforest land, some of it in indigenous reserves. Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Luís Roberto Barroso in March asked the Justice Ministry and Attorney General’s office “to verify the [documentary’s] findings and take appropriate civil and criminal measures.” The documentary, entitled “The Selling of the Amazon”, was aired on Feb. 26 by BBC Brasil, a subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It reported finding ads on Facebook Marketplace, a service in which network users can browse, buy and sell goods. Would-be sellers place ads, which prospective buyers can filter by location, category and price. BBC Brasil reporters used the Facebook Marketplace search-engine to find ads offering plots for sale—all of them in Rondônia, a Brazilian Amazon state...
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