BUENOS AIRES - Non-governmental groups in Argentina are leading the discussion on a legislative bill on forests that would help preserve the 'caldén' (Prosopis caldenia), an endangered tree.

The environmental organization Alihuén and the indigenous group Willi Kalkin in July began talks with the provincial government of La Pampa to protect the caldén, whose wood is used in making parquet floors, picture frames and rustic furniture.

The caldén forest in La Pampa runs the risk of disappearing within 10 years, Alihuén activist Leandro Altolaguirre told Tierramérica.

The aim is to study the tree's growth and its role in the ecosystem, and to create a ''biological corridor'' to ensure its sustainability, he said.

Interest in setting up legal protections for the caldén was triggered by the announcement of private projects to log the forest in La Pampa.

LIMA - The shrinking of the glaciers in the Peruvian Andes is a cause of concern for the head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Klaus Topfer, who is supporting an initiative to measure the surface of the glaciers every five years.

Topfer called on the president of the Andean Institute of Glaciology and Geo-environment, Benjamín Morales, to present a project to the United Nations for financing efforts to monitor and measure the glacier melt phenomenon.

In the past 27 years, Peru has lost 470 square km of glaciers, and 111 square km were in the Cordillera Blanca, an area in Peru's northern sierra that Topfer visited on Jul. 24, Morales told Tierramérica.

The reduction of the glacier mass is caused by pollution and by global climate change, and poses a serious threat for Peru, because the Andean snow and ice serves as the country's main water source, Morales said.

BOGOTA - The Colombian Fund for Agricultural Financing, FINAGRO, will cover the costs this year for planting lumber species of trees over 3,000 hectares in the northern departments of Cesar and Magdalena.

The program, to cost some 22.3 million dollars, will benefit the peasant farmers in the region, planting 'tecas' (Tectona grandis), 'melinas' (Gmelina arborea) and 'ceibas' (Ceiba pentandra), FINAGRO expert Fabián Grisales told Tierramérica.

Colombia loses around 101,000 hectares of forest each year, mostly due to the advance of the farming frontier and the expansion of commercial logging, announced the Colombian Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, in July.

In the Colombian Amazon, along the Pacific coast and a part of the country's Andean region, the forested area dropped from 56.28 million hectares in 1994 to 55.61 million hectares in 2001, said the study.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican peasant farmers who live in the areas where the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) spends its winters will receive funds to take care of their forests.

The payment will take place ''twice a year for the communities that are able to protect their forests,'' in compensation for the value that the lumber would otherwise have, Jordi Honey, of the Monarch Butterfly Program of the Mexican office of the World Wildlife Fund, told Tierramérica.

''We will try to strengthen the organization process of the communal properties and the communities so that they can make better decisions,'' Honey added.

The measure is part of the conservation efforts of the monarch butterfly biosphere reserve, which covers more than 50,000 hectares east of the capital. Every year, millions of butterflies arrive there from Canada and the United States to spend the northern hemisphere's winter season.

GUATEMALA CITY - A program for literacy and to promote new productive activities like reforestation are under way in communities of the northern Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz, with financial backing from the European Union.

The goal is that ''very poor people will have other job options, like making clothing, raising geese, pigs and cattle, or growing vegetables, in ways that don't harm the environment, while in parallel planting trees to reforest the damaged areas.''

In the first phase, teachers will receive training, then seeds will be distributed, as well as farming implement and other items, and finally comes the reforestation, Edwin Cucul, coordinator of the Integrated Literacy for Work program, told Tierramérica.

The initiative emerged in late 2002 as a complement to plans by the state-run National Literacy Committee. According to official figures, 80 percent of the 11.2 million Guatemalans live in poverty, and 30 percent are illiterate.