MEXICO CITY - The capital's government has begun work on a 90-km bikeway, demanded for more than a decade by cycling enthusiasts, but who now complain that the project does not go far enough.

The bike path is not part of a broader plan to promote bicycle use and discourage the polluting option of automobiles, says the non-governmental group Bicitekas. The new route will only serve as a recreational area on weekends, it argues.

Mexico City, one of the most polluted in the world, lacks an integral program to foment the use of bicycles, special infrastructure and traffic education. Cyclists say that they put their lives in danger when they ride in the capital's streets.

The bike route, which traverses central parts of the city, is being built by private companies at a cost of some 10 million dollars.

LIMA - The firms that present the best plans for reforestation in Peru, in a contest organized by the institution Fondebosque, will receive up to 100,000 dollars in financing to make their project a reality.

Fondebosque, which is backed by private enterprise and by the Agriculture Ministry, will also promote a line of credit to provide resources to small parcel owners of Amazon forest and for training, says director Roberto Zapata.

The entity is drawing up three reforestation projects to be sold to industrialized countries as part of an environmental service exchange to counteract those countries' emissions of greenhouse gases, and is designing a proposal for a debt swap for productive tree plantations.

One of the aims is to boost Peru's lumber exports from 110 million dollars annually to 3.5 billion dollars over the next decade.

BUENOS AIRES - Proteger, a non-governmental environmental organization, has proposed the creation in Argentina of a natural protected area for wetlands extending more than 800 km. The project would preserve freshwater reserves in an area covering 1.5 million hectares.

The areas of the provinces included in the Parana and Paraguay river basins should be added to the list of internationally important sites for the conservation and rational use of wetlands, says Proteger.

The region includes the northeastern provinces of Formosa, Corrientes, Santa Fe and Entre Rios, and the northern part of Buenos Aires province.

The plan has backing from the Worldwide Fund for Nature and Argentina's Secretariat for Environment and Sustainable Development, which is entrusted with the technical aspects of the project.

The river basins and marshes are rich freshwater ecosystems and play an important role in providing clean water and controlling flooding.

BOGOTA - The state-run Rio Magdalena Corporation (Cormagdalena) this month began efforts in northern Colombia for productive reforestation over 20,000 hectares, to be carried out over five years at a cost of five million dollars.

The plan will generate one job for every six hectares will initially take place in the departments of Atlantico and Bolivar, with support from private companies interested in the "clean" production mechanisms of the international Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Initial efforts are focused on a pilot program for the commercial planting to produce large trees on 5,000 hectares.

The government says that forestry is one of the sectors with greatest growth potential both economically and socially, given Colombia's natural production of trees and strong yields of certain commercially planted tree species.

TEGUCIGALPA - Honduras lost around 2,500 hectares of pine forest in February to fires, report officials from the government's Honduran Corporation for Forest Development.

Intentionally set fires caused the losses incurred during the last week of February, Lucky Medina, in charge of forest protection, told Tierramérica.

Two alleged culprits were caught with flammable liquids in El Hatillo, a forested area that serves as a main "lung" for the capital, where the fires occurred.

But Clarissa Vega, environmental prosecutor, told Tierramérica that an average of 100,000 hectares of pine forest are burned in Honduras each year, equal to the area that is illegally logged.

The country will lose all of its pine resources within three decades at the current rate of destruction, she said.

MANAGUA - The scientific community is considering the addition of Garganta de Yukusama and San Luis to the list of Nicaragua's protected areas and whether it should back a bill before the legislature to expand the list of such areas to 78.

Researcher Noel González Valdivia proposed the initiative. He explained to Tierramérica that these areas, in the northern municipality of Estelí, hold "10 percent of the nation's flora as well as arid forest, the most threatened in Latin America."

Managua hosted the first Mesoamerican Congress on Protected Areas, Mar 10-14, which produced the Conservation Agreement for Biodiversity and Protection of Wildlife Areas of Central America, a regional accord that defines 11 protected areas along border areas.

GUATEMALA CITY - A 13,500-hectare marshland in Guatemala, the country's largest, is threatened by increased depredation and contamination, warns a new scientific study.

The biodiversity of Manchón Guamuchal, a stopping point for migratory birds located southeast of the capital near the Pacific coast, is being hurt by the destruction of mangroves and the pollution caused by the shrimp and banana industries, according to the research of Brazilian expert Yara Schaeffer-Novelli.

The area "is the sole remaining site in Guatemala where 14 duck species can be found, 12 of which are migratory, and 20 species of herons," as well as other birds, says the scientist.

"Manchón is the most important area of special protection on the southwestern Guatemalan coast and the only place in the region to host migratory birds, which use the western corridor originating in Canada and the United States," she writes.