RIO DE JANEIRO - The jaraquí and the black piranha, two abundant types of fish in the Amazon, permit production of a caviar similar to that made from sturgeon eggs, according to an experiment by the National Research Institute of the Amazon, INPA.

However, the the study will not have commercial applications, the project's leader Edson Lessi told Tierramérica, because that would put the Amazon species in danger of extinction, as is the case of sturgeon. 888

Over-fishing is prevented by banning capture during the fishes' reproductive period. The INPA study utilized the fish eggs left over at the market in the Amazon city of Manaos.

The black piranha (Serrasalmus rhombeus) is believed to have the additional attraction of being an aphrodesiac. But the only alternative to produce more caviar, for now, is fish farming of sturgeon, which is done in neighboring Uruguay, concludes Lessi.

GUATEMALA CITY - Authorities here launched a program to rescue Laguna del Tigre National Park, on the Maya Biosphere Reserve, affected by contamination, over-use and deforestation.

Among the measures is the creation of a fund of around two million dollars to buy lands and resettle hundreds of poor families who have invaded the reserve, Ana Noguera, executive secretary of teh National Council of Protected Areas, CONAP, told Tierramérica.

Also planned are more patrols and monitoring by the army and the national civil police, as well as granting special-use permits for the reserve, for its sustainable management.

The park covers 289,212 hectares, holds an important international wetlands and forms part of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, a 1.5-million-hectare area situated in the northern department of El Petén along the Mexican border.

SANTIAGO - The Sustainable Chile program charged on Oct. 31 that the Canadian company Barrick Gold is manipulating scientific reports so that the government will allow the removal of glaciers on the Chile-Argentina border, where the firm aims to establish the million-dollar gold mining project Pascua Lama.

Sara Larraín, director of the non-governmental Sustainable Chile, told Tierramérica that Barrick Gold is publishing a report by unknown glaciologists who maintain that the glaciers Toro I, Toro II and Esperanza (located 660 km north of Santiago) cannot be clasified as glaciers "and, therefore, can be destroyed," although two months earlier they said the ice masses were indeed glaciers.

The three glaciers provide the water needed for irrigating the Elqui Valley, in the central region of Coquimbo, home to 70,000 small farmers -- who oppose the mining project. Barrick Gold is paying out a total of 60 million dollars to quell their protests against Pascua Lama, charges Sustainable Chile.

CARACAS - The caterpillar of the Brassolis sophorae butterfly are destroying the fronds of palm trees in Caracas, especially in the Botanical Garden, the 70-acre lungs of the city center that had aimed to establish Latin America's leading palm tree collection, says director Mariflor Burguillos.

Entomologist Yasmín Contreras told Tierramérica that the areas hardest hit in the city are Los Caobos Park, with several tree-covered hectares alongside the Botanical Garden, and the neighborhoods where there are a lot of chaguaramo or royal palms (Roystonea regia).

This pest is harmless to humans, noted Contreras. So far, the Ministry of Environment has been fighting the problem by collecting the species' pupae and larvae in public sites and homes, eliminating them later by submerging them in oil or in concentrated liquid soap.

HAVANA - The rains brought by Hurricane Wilma alleviated the drought that had plagued Cuba, with evident benefit for the island's agricultural areas, according to farmers consulted by Tierramérica.

"It began to rain here long before Wilma, in August, and we practically didn't need to irrigate the rice paddies. Harvesting was a bit complicated with so much water, but the grain has already dried," said Rubén Torres, owner of a farm in the central province of Villa Clara, where earlier this year the fields were long parched from the drought.

The Cuban Water Resources Institute announced in early November that the 235 reservoirs exploited throughout the country, with a total capacity of nine billion cubic meters of water, are at 72 percent of their volume.