LIMA - The pharmaceutical company Hersil de Peru, which works with endemic medicinal plants, is about to launch a new product based on 'maca' (Lepidium meyenii Walp), known popularly as "herbal Viagra" because of its supposed sexual stimulant qualities.

"We have several new clinical studies about maca (especially one variety of it) and when it becomes public knowledge it is going to generate great demand," José Luis Silva, an executive at Hersil, which with 40 years on the market is focusing on the sustainable use of biotechnology, told Tierramérica.

Silva, who for business reasons preferred to keep details of new products confidential, said that the properties of maca are well known in Peru, which is why selling it does not require recognizing the special rights of traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, who have been using maca for hundreds of years.

Indigenous groups and social activists, however, maintain that it is a case of biopiracy of indigenous knowledge and they demand compensation for the commercialization of maca.

CARACAS - Nine small boa constrictors were found last week by postal employees in Caracas, inside a package destined for the United States that raised suspicions because the return address was incomplete, reported Miguel Arévalo of the Postal Institute.

"This year we have found packages with beetles and spiders" addressed to destinations in the United States and Britain, he said.

Illegally taken from Venezuela are "more than 70 species of wildlife, to be marketed in countries of the industrialized North as pets. In highest demand among snakes are anacondas, coral and rattlers, and among birds are toucans, parrots and guacamayas," Israel Cañizales, director of El Pinar Zoo in Caracas, told Tierramérica.

Conservationists criticize the Environment Ministry because the fine for this type of smuggling can be as low as four dollars.

GUATEMALA CITY - Guatemala's National Council of Protected Areas, CONAP, will begin a strategy for preserving the endangered venomous beaded lizard "Heloderma horridum charlesbogerti", native to the Motagua region, east of the capital.

In the context of this program, which is backed by the Nature Conservancy, Defenders of Nature Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), among others, a workshop will be held in late November in Rio Hondo, in the eastern municipality of Zacapa, where this type of lizard still lives, CONAP spokeswoman Viviana Flores told Tierramérica.

Participants will define the process for conservation and maintenance of this reptile, known popularly as "niño dormido" (sleepy child), and with a robust body, less than one meter long, black with yellow tones, either as small points or large spots.

SANTA CLARA - Ecological and inexpensive building materials proved again this year how strong they are in withstanding hurricanes, according to a survey conducted in this city, 268 km from Havana.

"We found that none of the more than 200 roofs constructed with microcement tiles along the north coast suffered damage from Hurricane Dennis last July," professor Fernando Martirena, assistant director of the Central University of Las Villas's materials and structural research, CIDEM, told Tierramérica.

The roofing tiles are made from sand, conventional cement, water and galvanized wire in small workshops dedicated to producing environmentally friendly building materials, part of an international cooperation project led by CIDEM.

Martirena said the eco-materials withstood several hurricanes, unlike asbestos cement in the wavy sheets of roofing commonly used in this area.

SANTIAGO - Chile's President Ricardo Lagos announced on Nov. 15 the start of two projects to extend the Metropolitan Railroad, slated for 2009, to benefit several impoverished districts around the capital.

One is the extension of Line 1 east from Santiago, to connect with one of the main stations of the Transantiago network, a vast modernization project targeting the bus system.

The second is a new line, which connected to the existing Line 5, will cut travel time by 1.5 hours for residents of Maipú who currently commute by bus to the central Plaza de Armas in Santiago.

"I'm pleased. In Maipú we need the train, which will also reduce the air pollution coming from buses and cars," university student Lorenzo Contreras said in a conversation with Tierramérica.

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil will propose negotiating some form of financing or compensating forest conservation during the United Nations Conference on Climate Change to take place Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 in Montreal, Canada.

Deforestation is responsible for 75 percent of the greenhouse gases produced in Brazil, which is why efforts are focused on containing the destruction of the Amazon.

This is "a big step forward" for a country that previously rejected inclusion of the issue in the Convention on Climate Change, Paulo Moutinho, coordinator of IPAM, Environmental Research Institute of the Amazon, told Tierramérica.

IPAM will propose "a compensated reduction of deforestation," that would generate credits for sale on the carbon market, for reducing climate changing greenhouse gas emissions. The credits would be obtained by reducing deforestation by a set target for each country, and to surpass that target the country would have to reduce gas emissions elsewhere, explained Moutinho.