RIO DE JANEIRO – The Tumucumaque Mountains National Park, the world’s largest tropical forest conservation area, covers 38,000 square km in northern Brazil, and will soon add another 30,000 in neighboring French Guiana.

Brazil is working with France to set up the reserve, and the countries hope to involve Surinam in the initiative aimed at protecting one of the Amazon’s largest ecosystems.

One approach is to develop ecotourism through a joint program with French Guiana, says Mary Alegretti, Amazonian coordinator at Brazil’s Environment Ministry.

Tumucumaque has the backing of a million dollars from the non-governmental Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF, also known as World Wildlife Fund).

SANTIAGO – The popular children’s show “31 Minutes”, of the state-run Televisión Nacional de Chile, is hosted by puppets and includes a segment on the environment, the first broadcast of which will track “where muck goes”.

Every Saturday and Sunday, the show’s host – in this case a rabbit – takes up issues like sewage treatment, pollution, or desertification.

The environmental aim of “31 Minutes”, also backed by the National Environment Commission, is to take a broad and pleasant approach to education, focusing on solutions rather than on conflict.

CARACAS – Venezuela will conduct an inventory of its forestry resources over the next six year, with help from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), announced environment and natural resources minister Ana Elisa Osorio.

Taking stock of the country’s natural wealth will reveal the forest’s potential in terms of water, oxygen production and biodiversity, said Osorio, noting that the most recent information available is based on satellite images from a decade ago.

The forests of Venezuela, one of the top eight countries in terms of biodiversity, cover some 480,000 square km, 52 percent of the country. But environmental groups report that more than 2,400 square km are deforested each year.

TEGUCIGALPA – The biosphere reserve of the Plátano River, in northeast Honduras, could lose its “heritage of humanity” status, granted by the United Nations, due to the environmental deterioration of the area, official sources told Tierramérica.

The director of the state-run Honduran Forest Development Corporation (COHDEFOR), Gustavo Morales, said the lack of government policies aimed at true protection of natural resources leaves the biosphere vulnerable, “and is on the verge of losing its heritage of humanity title.”

The U.N. gave the Plátano River biosphere the designation in 1980 because it holds important populations of endangered flora and fauna. A U.N. delegation is to visit Honduras at mid-year to evaluate the reserve.

GUATEMALA CITY – The environmental prosecutor of Guatemala is pursuing more than 20 lawsuits against companies and individuals for the illegal logging and trade of the country’s forest resources, the aim being to halt deforestation, legal assistant José Luis Rivera told Tierramérica.

“In addition to bringing the perpetrators to justice, what is most important is to repair the harm by ensuring reforestation in proportion to the quantity and quality of the trees cut,” Rivera said.

In March, the owners of two lumber mills in northern Guatemala were found guilty of trafficking lumber. A thousand cubic feet of wood were seized from one – “the equivalent of 80 trucks full,” noted the legal expert.

MANAGUA – Ten years of investigations into the impact of solar radiation on life and on human health have been compiled in the book “Tropical Solar Radiation”, written in Spanish, and published in Nicaragua by the Jesuit Central American University (UCA).

Priest Julio López led the UCA research team that put together the 10-chapter book, providing information on sun intensity, clouds and daily global radiation, among others.

“Knowledge about solar radiation as a source of vital energy could foment the use of environmentally clean energy sources in the city and countryside alike,” said López, who hopes to contribute to solutions for “a sustainable and improved quality of life, confronting consumerism and contamination.”