GUATEMALA CITY - The Montana Exploradora mining company, a subsidiary of the Canadian Glamis Gold, will begin extracting gold in late January in the eastern Guatemalan department of San Marcos, despite the opposition of environmentalists.

The Ministry of Energy and Mining authorized the company to begin the Marlin I project in San Miguel Ixtahuacán and Concepción Tatuapa, 300 km west of the capital, the ministry's assistant director for mining, Rodolfo Calzia, told Tierramérica.

The area is estimated to hold four million ounces of gold. Each ounce is worth 350 dollars, says Calzia.

The mining project will create some 500 jobs and the nation's coffers will receive one percent of the export price.

"This project is a bad idea because the country will not gain a thing, and runs the risk of massive contamination," environmental activists Magalí Rey Sosa, of the MadreSelva Collective, told Tierramérica.

But Calzia says that to prevent contamination from the chemicals used in processing gold ore, it will be handled outside of Guatemala.

TEGUCIGALPA - Some 271 families of the Rio Platano biosphere and the Tawahka Asagni reserve, along the northeastern Honduran Atlantic coast, are leading projects to preserve one of the main stretches of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.

Sustainable agriculture, forest conservation and management, and recovery of endangered species are the focus of the initiatives carried out by peasant farmers and Indians, with backing from the PPD, a small donations program, and from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an agency of the World Bank.

"The results so far are encouraging. The people decide what they want to do, and have learned to present projects and to negotiate with the donors," Hugo Galeano, of the PPD, told Tierramérica.

The sums for each project range from 10,000 to 30,000 dollars over 18 months, channeled through local watershed councils, associations, cooperatives and women's groups.

MANAGUA - A law to regulate the use and conservation of Nicaragua's fishing resources, frozen 10 years ago in the nation's Congress, could be approved once the lawmakers convene this year, now that political consensus has been achieved in the parliamentary commission on the environment.

The bill, shelved as a result of political and economic interests, was approved in commission when it ended its 2003 sessions in mid-December, and is expected to pass a full congressional vote.

The law would ban "cruel fishing practices, like taking sharks to cut off their fins and throwing them back into the sea, as well as catching lobster that do not meet size requirements," parliamentary commission president Jaime Morales explained to Tierramérica.

Also to be prohibited is the use of explosives in fishing, as practiced by some Miskito Indians along Nicaragua's Caribbean coast.

SAN JOSE - The Costa Rican Center for Cleaner Production will this year present a proposal for the wide-scale production and use of biodiesel, fuel created in part from natural oil sources, such as the African palm.

A mix of fossil and plant-based fuel, biodiesel burns more cleanly and efficiently, reducing emissions of toxic gases, sulfur and particulate matter.

"Costa Rica spends 500 million dollars on petroleum-derived fuels every year. Biodiesel could substitute a portion of that and provide jobs for African palm growers in the economically depressed areas in the south and along the central Pacific coast," says Sergio Musmanni, director of the Center.

Biodiesel is already being used in Europe and the United States. Brazil is the pioneer in promoting biodiesel use in Latin America. Costa Rica is the first in Central America.

LIMA - The city government of Puno, in southern Peru, is to build a wastewater treatment plant in order to fight the serious contamination problem afflicting Lake Titicaca.

The project will be paid for by a 4.3 million dollar donation and a 12 million dollar loan from the German international cooperation agency, KFW, and by two million dollars from the Peruvian government, according to Puno's mayor, Mariano Portugal.

The sewage from this city of 130,000 people triggered the explosion of lentil-sized algae, filling the bay with a four-inch cover that absorbs nutrients and prevents light from reaching the aquatic plants and animals below.

Lake Titicaca is located 1,815 meters above sea level, on the high plateau shared by Peru and Bolivia. It is the highest lake in the world and the biggest in Latin America.

MEXICO CITY - On Jan. 1 a law on solid waste took effect in the Mexican capital, requiring residents to separate organic matter from other materials. Mexico produces nearly 12,000 tons of garbage each day.

The people of Mexico city are to separate and reduce the production of solid waste, keep the outside of their homes and businesses clean, and to collaborate with recycling efforts.

The law was passed in 2003 by the city's legislative assembly, which is dominated by the
left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) of the mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

But opposition lawmakers told Tierramérica that the population is unaware of the new requirements, which are being implemented without an information campaign to raise awareness about the waste problem, and about the fines for failure to comply.

BOGOTA - With an investment of 6.6 million dollars over the next five years, the Colombian public works agency EPM will reforest 5,000 hectares of forests in the watershed areas of the northwestern department of Antioquia.

Oscar Velásquez, general manager of the agency that monitors potable water services, announced the project when he presented the study, "Reforestation program for the watersheds encompassed in the EPM aqueduct system", begun last November.

The investigation is the result of concern about the deterioration of the quantity and quality of the watersheds that supply the aqueduct system and about problems related to sedimentation and environmental destruction, he said.