Researchers think a small bay on the western side of the Galápagos island of Isabela might serve as a nursery for the smooth hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zygaena). Visiting the bay in April, a team of scientists observed at least a dozen smooth hammerheads that they estimated to be a year old at most. If the nursery find is confirmed, it would have potentially important marine-conservation significance given the smooth hammerhead’s listing as vulnerable—one step short of endangered—by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Smooth hammerheads are among the species caught in fishing operations engaged in the lucrative shark-fin trade, which experts say has contributed to the decimation of shark populations worldwide. Capture of sharks for their fins is regulated in some Latin American countries, but so-called “incidental” catch of sharks is allowed in several. The scientists—from Galápagos National Park, San Francisco...
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South American and German advocacy groups filed a non-judicial complaint on April 25 against the German company Bayer for selling genetically modified soybeans whose large-scale use with a powerful herbicide, they claim, is harming the environment and human health in the region. The environmental and human rights groups—four of them South American and two of them German—are departing from the usual path of challenging governments that permit the sale and use of transgenic crop varieties and agrochemicals in their countries. Instead, they are taking direct aim at a corporation, in this case Bayer, that sells the products. And rather than going to court, the groups are appealing to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the intergovernmental organization that provides its 38 developed-country members—among them Germany—a forum for discussion of economic and social issues. The advocacy organizations say theirs is the first...
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Signatories to the first regional environmental treaty covering Latin America and the Caribbean have agreed to a six-year action plan aimed at recognizing and protecting environmental defenders. Representatives of the 16 countries that have thus far ratified the treaty, known as the Escazú Agreement, approved the action plan in April during a conference of the parties in Santiago, Chile. Protecting environmental rights defenders has been a central goal of the Escazú Agreement, whose overarching aim is to promote greater public awareness of and participation in decision-making that has environmental implications. The formal name of the treaty, adopted in 2018 in the community of Escazú, Costa Rica, is the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. Latin America holds a dubious distinction when it comes to violence against environmental defenders. Reports issued over the past 11 years by the United Kingdom...
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The Panamanian nonprofit Marea Verde says its Baltimore-style aquatic trash wheel removed 45,000 pounds of recyclable plastic and 264,000 pounds of solid waste from Panama’s Juan Díaz River in 2023. Marea Verde Director Sandy Watemberg expects those numbers to improve in subsequent years. That’s because the latest El Niño weather pattern, which is believed to have contributed to record low rainfall in 2023, is forecast to ease. Dubbed Wanda Díaz, the stationary, solar- and hydraulic-powered craft floats on the Juan Díaz River, downstream of growing neighborhoods in eastern Panama City and upstream of mangroves at the river’s mouth. The river’s flow funnels the trash through a system of booms and netting to a conveyor belt. Beneath the machine’s solar-paneled canopy, the belt moves the trash from the water and onto a waist-height platform on the craft. Marea Verde employees then remove recyclable plastics and put them...
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