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.