TEGUCIGALPA - The Honduran government is working hard to prevent the spread of the southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis) plague in the northeastern department of Olancho, Roberto Cabrera, of the state-run forest development agency COHDEFOR, told Tierramérica.

For the past two weeks the authorities have maintained a state of ''forest emergency'' in the area because of this tree bark-destroying insect.

The hardest hit municipalities are San Estebán, Gualaco, Jano and Dulce Nombre de Culmí. Residents, the business community and local officials have launched an emergency plan to control the plague and save the pine forests that have not yet been harmed.

Olancho is one of the biggest departments in Honduras and for the past two years environmentalists and the local population have maintained an intense fight against illegal logging of their forests resources.

GUATEMALA CITY - Family fishing operations in Guatemala's Izabal Lake, the largest in the country, covering a thousand square kilometers, have denounced a rise in illegal fishing by smugglers, whose activities they say could push several species to extinction.

Pedro Jiménez, president of the Polochic Fishing Association, told Tierramérica that people without permits are fishing with 3,000-meter dragnets, while the legally allowed size is just 600 meters.

If that practice continues, ''in two years several species will have disappeared,'' including fish, turtles and manatees.

Hugo Mérida, regional coordinator of the Fish and Aquiculture Management Unit, said that the denunciation has convinced authorities to conduct patrols with police support to confiscate illegal fishing equipment and to fine the culprits.

LIMA - The reform of Peru's Environmental Code will include economic incentives for compliance with environmental regulations, lawmaker Fabiola Morales told Tierramérica.

Morales is a member of the commission that is drafting a bill on the issue. Represented on the commission are 18 public, non-governmental and business institutions.

''The likely signing of a free trade treaty with the United States is pushing us to strengthen legal instruments in defense of the environment,'' said Morales.

The existing environmental code, dating to 1991, obligates mining, logging, industrial and tourism companies to present plans for mitigating environmental impacts, otherwise they could face sanctions, including prison time.

''After 14 years of applying that law, we have found that except in the mining sector it has not achieved its goals. The threat of sanctions was not enough, leading us to try the carrot-stick approach,'' said lawmaker Victor Espinoza.

BUENOS AIRES - Protests by residents and by environmental groups against the sale and logging of 25,000 hectares in Argentina's General Pizarro nature preserve, in the northern province of Salta, led businessman Manuel Santos Uribellarrea to withdraw from the project, Greenpeace representatives told Tierramérica.

Uribellarrea sold the two parcels he had acquired in the auction ordered by Salta's Governor Juan Carlos Romero. Earlier, another businessman, Mario Ragone, sold the parcel he had bought, for similar reasons.

Uribellarrea and Ragone, in turn, sold their land to Manuel Courel, who had bought four of the auctioned parcels.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups said they will focus their campaign on Courel, who maintains his aim to log the preserve, which is also home to the indigenous Wichí, and holds the Yungas and Chaco forests. Courel's actions would force the Indians from the land.

BOGOTA - The forest industry is responsible for 38,000 direct jobs in Colombia, and if the area planted for commercial ends would expand from 150,000 to 3.0 million hectares in the next five years, the number of jobs would be 760,000, according to ''Outlook for investment in the Colombian forest industry''.

According to this study, presented Jan. 31 by the Ministry of Agriculture, and to data from the National Forestry Research and Development Corporation, the useable area for sustainable commercial forestry is 16 million hectares: 4.5 million appropriate for unlimited commercial forestry, and 11.5 million with minor restrictions.

Adolfo Aristizábal, president of the national council of the Federation of Logging Industries, told Tierramérica that Colombia is a nation of forests, but has nowhere near the levels of industrial cultivation of other countries.