Controversy over a lack of public information on the environmental impacts of salmon farming has resurfaced in Chile as 13 salmon producers there fight efforts to make public their farms’ fish mortality, antibiotic use and parasite loads. On May 12, the salmon producers won a ruling in Puerto Montt Appeals Court provisionally suspending an administrative agency’s order that a citizen be granted access to the data. The information at issue resides with Chile’s National Fish and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca), which collects data on salmon-industry operations in the country but does not make it public. The agency that ordered the data be released is the Transparency Council, a public body created in 2008 to further transparency and accountability in government. In challenging the order, the salmon companies alleged the information’s release would harm them commercially and economically, putting them at a competitive disadvantage internationally. Chile is the world’s second greatest...
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Environmentalists and civil society are celebrating what they’re portraying as a major conservation win on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula—the defeat of a massive water-park project in Mahahual, a coastal village of 2,600 in Quintana Roo state. Mahahual had been chosen by Royal Caribbean Group as the site of “Perfect Day Mexico,” a giant water park that the world’s second largest cruise line aimed to build with the goal of serving 21,000 cruise-ship tourists per day and creating 2,500 jobs. Royal Caribbean planned to spend US$600 million on the park, which was slated to open in 2027 with facilities featuring 30 waterslides, 12 restaurants and 24 bars. The proposed 90-hectare (222-acre) site lies alongside the existing Costa Maya cruise-ship pier in an area of coast close to the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the Western Hemisphere’s largest barrier reef. Opponents complained the would-be host municipality...
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Two Chilean Indigenous communities recently secured a court order suspending a project to expand production at one of Chile’s major copper mines. Chile’s Environmental Court determined the expansion had been approved without adequately considering its impact on the livelihoods and customs of Indigenous communities and on the marine environment. The ruling concerns the Collahuasi mine in northern Chile’s remote Tarapacá region, which is part of the Atacama Desert. Begun in 1999, it is jointly owned by the multinational corporations Glencore and Anglo American. The mine’s US$3.2 billion expansion plan calls for construction of a seawater desalination plant and an aqueduct to transport the water to the Andes Mountains for use in the mine. The initiative entails the use of an additional 3,639 hectares (8,992 acres) beyond the current area of activity. The planned expansion underwent environmental-impact-assessment scrutiny in 2019 and was approved two years later. But acting...
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The global summit on conservation of migratory animals, held March 23-29 in Campo Grande, Brazil, earmarked dozens of species for greater protection. Delegates at the 15th meeting of the U.N. Convention of the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) added a record 40 species, subspecies and populations to CMS Appendix I, which mandates national action for species in danger of extinction, and Appendix II, which encourages, but does not mandate, international action for listed species. At the conference, dubbed CMS COP15, delegates added species to Appendix I that include three shorebird species which winter in South America after nesting to reproduce in North America—the Hudsonian whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus hudsonicus), the Hudsonian godwit (Limosa haemastica), and the lesser yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes). “Adding these three shorebirds to Appendix I is important because degraded coastal habitats have caused steep population declines in these three species,” says Raquel Carvalho, shorebird program...
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