QUITO - Four indigenous teachers are working to spread the Zápara language and customs in an effort to ensure the survival of this Ecuadorian Amazon native community that has just 114 members left.

Like the Quijos and the Tetetes, this indigenous group is on the road to extinction. The Organization of the Zápara Nationality of Ecuador is fighting to keep the community's roots alive through a cultural recovery project.

The group has participated in reunions with the Zápara communities of Peru, separated from their Ecuadorian kin by the war between the two countries in 1941.

MEXICO - Logging and fires are devastating the forests in Mexico where the monarch butterfly winters every year after fluttering 3,000 km south from Canada and the United States.

Over the last 30 years, 50 percent of the forests have been destroyed in Mexico City's neighboring states of Mexico and Michoacán, where millions of monarch butterflies spend the winter and mate, reported the World Wildlife Fund.

This species, of brilliant orange and black, whose arrival in Mexico attracts 30,000 tourists each year, could soon change its annual ritual, given the rapid disappearance of the habitat where it spends the northern hemisphere winter, warns the Fund.

In 1986, the Mexican government declared the monarch butterfly wintering grounds to be protected areas, but the destruction has not stopped, denounced Homero Aridjis, a Mexican writer and activist of the environmental Group of 100.

BOGOTA - Young fisherfolk in northern Colombia were recognized this month for their efforts to recover a degraded stream, a tributary of a marsh they use as a fish hatchery.

The creators of the project in María La Baja, a town in the department of Bolívar, received the prize from the non-governmental organization Procomún, which every year honors initiatives for the sustainable management of productive natural resources.

The reforestation project of the Paso el Medio river basin, which drains into the María La Baja marsh, is spearheaded by17 young people, who every month sell one ton of fish raised in their hatcheries.

Franklin Munarris, head of the project, explained that the recovery of the stream through the planting of trees along its banks allows them to keep their fish hatcheries alive.

HAVANA - Cuba's actions in defense of the environment were recognized September 11, when the country was chosen as the headquarters for World Environment Day 2001.

The United Nations Environmental Program made its decision based on the fact that the Caribbean nation was able to reduce environmental contamination by 7.33 percent in 1999, said Rosa Elena Simeón, Cuba's Minister of Science, Technology and the Environment.

The Cuban government earmarked 6.6 percent of its budget in 1998 for environmental preservation, 15.1 percent in 1999, and 7.9 percent for this year, said the official.

The World Environment Day is celebrated annually on June 5. On that date in 2001, Cuba is to host an international conference on the environment and development.


*Source: Inter Press Service.