RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil will have its first electrical engine, hydrogen-fuelled bus in 2006, according to the graduate engineering program at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

It is ''the vehicle of the future'', because it does not pollute and makes little noise, said project coordinator Paulo Emilio de Miranda.

Dozens of similar buses circulate in industrialized countries, but Brazil has the advantage of a highly developed passenger vehicle industry that has joined the initiative, and the prototype will cost about half what the European versions did.

The environmentally friendly bus will be 12 meters long, with a capacity for 109 passengers and able to travel 300 km between refueling.

SANTIAGO - International experts will visit Chile in February or March to investigate the recent massive deaths of black-necked swans (Cygnus melancoryphus) in the Río Cruces nature sanctuary, 790 km south of the capital. Environmentalists claim it was caused by waste from a cellulose factory.

The sanctuary had the largest population of this swan species in Latin America. Of the approximately 6,000 swans that make the reserve their home, 120 died suddenly, and another 4,000 left the area.

A report from the Universidad Austral de Valdivia said the birds died of starvation when their food supply was exhausted. The 'luchecillo' (Egeria densa), a water weed, disappeared and there were high concentrations of iron in the dead swans' livers, as well as a presence of parasites.

HAVANA - Around 90 percent of Cuba's coastline suffers some degree of erosion as a result of rising sea level, pollution and extraction of sand, warns an official report.

A study on science, technology and human development in Cuba, sponsored by the United Nations Development Program, and to which Tierramérica had access, adds that this impact also is related to the cutting of mangroves and the construction of buildings and dams near the shore.

More than 30 percent of Cuba's mangroves and three percent of coral reefs have been affected, says the study.

Around this Caribbean island, mangroves cover 5,325 square km, reefs cover 3,400 square km, and beaches extend some 600 km.

GUATEMALA CITY - Environmental groups from Guatemala and Mexico will strengthen a strategic alliance in 2005 to protect the two countries' shared watershed of the Usumacinta River.

''It's a bi-national project aimed at preventing forest fires, illegal squatting and other actions that deteriorate our national parks'' in the area, Oscar Núñez, director of Guatemala's Defensores de la Naturaleza (Nature Defenders), told Tierramérica.

His organization, along with the Guatemalan Kukulcán Foundation and Mexico's Pronatura, will carry out the project with the economic backing of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said Núñez.

He added that the river basin's 550 square km are home to Mayan archeological sites as well as rich biodiversity.

CARACAS - Venezuelan environmentalists expressed their concern about a decree in the central state of Cojedes that ordered ''intervention'' of all fallow lands that could be used in agriculture, including extensive cattle ranching accompanied by private forest and water reserves, that are now home to hundreds of species.

''The definition of fallow land could hurt spaces that are important, not because of agricultural production, but rather for their water supply potential, and because they are the habitat of mammals, birds, reptiles and insects,'' Diego Díaz, president of the environmental group Vitalis, told Tierramérica.

Vitalis and similar organizations have also sounded the alarm about the development of sugarcane plantations and a sugar mill that Cojedes Governor Yonny Yánez is promoting. The governor, however, accompanied his intervention decree with another that sets up study groups and negotiation panels with the participation of the people affected.

TEGUCIGALPA - The Honduran Environmental Prosecutor revoked the environmental permit of El Faro, a shrimping operation that fishes in the Gulf of Fonseca, on the Pacific Ocean. The firm is accused of causing severe damage to wetlands and mangroves in the area, which is shared by Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Jorge Varela, of the Committee for the Defense of Flora and Fauna in the Gulf of Fonseca, told Tierramérica that the company must pay a fine of 55,000 dollars and repair the damages in La Berbería lagoon, a Honduran ecological reserve since 1998, even though the shrimper had an environmental permit to operate there.

A complaint filed seven months ago by the Committee led to the revocation of the permit. ''Now we must proceed against the officials who granted the permit, in violation of the law,'' said Varela.