CARACAS - The governmental National Reforestation Company of Venezuela has recently planted 700 Caracas walnut seedlings (Juglans venezuelensis), a nearly extinct species native to the capital region.

The Caracas walnut was once part of the forests around the capital in areas 1,000 meters above sea level. Since Spanish colonization, the walnut tree was heavily exploited for its wood prized for cabinetmaking and construction of musical instruments.

Practically extinct in the late 19th century, just a dozen Caracas walnut trees survived when in 2000 the Environment Ministry launched a conservation program based on plant breeding.

Hundreds of seedlings were produced and planted in late May, early June, ahead of the northern Venezuelan rainy season.

SANTIAGO - By 2009, all of the Chilean capital's sewage will be passing through water treatment plants, according to city authorities and executives of the Aguas Andinas water and sanitation company.

The Mapocho River, which begins in the Andes Mountains, is the principal river of Santiago, and has been used historically for the discharge of urban wastewater, meaning it also contaminates the Maipo River, into which it flows.

Aguas Andinas inaugurated El Trebal treatment plant in 2001 and during the second half of this year will begin operating La Farfana. The two plants will clean up volumes of wastewater equivalent to that consumed by five million people. Some six million people live in the Santiago Metropolitan Region.

HAVANA - More than 30 percent of the Cuban mangroves, coastal vegetation that covers some 500,000 hectares of the archipelago, are suffering from unregulated logging, industrial runoff and drought, among other human or natural pressures, say experts.

An official forest protection program includes a series of regulations aimed at preventing illegal burning or logging of mangroves or the construction of roads that obstruct the flow of water and sediment that these areas need to survive.

Worldwide, mangroves cover 15 million hectares, serving to reduce coastline erosion caused by waves and tides, and to prevent the salinization of coastal soils and freshwater sources.

RIO DE JANEIRO - The Brazilian government has authorized research of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or transgenics, responding to demands by scientists who complained that their experiments had been interrupted by previous legislation.

The governmental Brazilian Institute of Environment implemented rules on Jun. 2 for the registration and authorization of GMO projects run by specialized laboratories.

"Brazil cannot renounce transgenic technology," states a letter signed by hundreds of scientists who urged the government and parliament to lift the ban on GMO studies dating to January 2002.

Transgenic plants resistant to mold, bacteria or insects were defined in a legal text as agro-toxins and, therefore, their further development was subject to unattainable requirements.

Leila Oda, president of the National Biosafety Association, says the transgenic plants are safe and that the ban only caused technological backsliding and economic losses.

GUATEMALA CITY - The Forest Community Association of El Petén, in northern Guatemala, received the presidential environment medal for their efforts in promotion, protection and sustainable use of the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

The association, the country's largest, represents 22 community organizations that manage 449,829 hectares of forests in El Petén.

Nearly 75 of that territory was certified by the International Forest Stewardship Council, Environment Ministry spokesman Sergio del Aguila told Tierramérica.

The prize, awarded Jun. 5, World Environment Day, recognizes their achievements in reducing the expansion of farmland into the forested areas, controlling immigration into the area and controlling forest fires in the Maya Biosphere, as well as for training peasant farmers in forest management and sustainable use of the wood.

TEGUCIGALPA - One for each of the 187 people who were "disappeared" during the political violence of Honduras in the 1980s, 187 trees will be planted in the Forest Against Oblivion, in the southern area of Santana, near the capital.

Through this effort, begun May 31 and to wrap up in August, the Committee of Families of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) seeks to maintain the memory of those who were kidnapped by paramilitary groups and government forces in the 1980s and to support environmental protection.

One hectare will be planted with pines, oaks and cedars in memory of the 187 people recognized as disappeared in a government report a decade ago, COFADEH coordinator Bertha Oliva told Tierramérica.

Also in Santana, near the site of a clandestine cemetery dating back to the political violence, a garden will be created in honor "of the rest of the disappeared who were not included in that official report," said Oliva.

"We want to cultivate life and hope in a place where before there was death," she added.