CARACAS - May 9 will mark the first celebration in Venezuela of International Bird Day "to raise awareness about the riches in our skies and the destruction of habitat and illegal trade," Marieta Hernández, president of the conservationist Audubon Society, told Tierramérica.

The promoting agency for the celebration held a public consultation period for choosing the bird species that will serve as the symbol: the saffron finch (Sicalis flaveola), yellow oriole or 'Gonzalito' (Icterus nigrogularis), blue-grey tanager (Thraupis episcopus), snowy egret (Egretta thula) or the black-hooded red siskin (Carduelis cucullata).

Hernández stressed the need to highlight "Venezuela's status as the sixth leading country for the number of bird species, nearly 1,400," many of which are threatened because of habitat destruction.

SANTIAGO - The environment officials in Chile's Bio-Bio region, more than 400 km south of Santiago, will allow the Nueva Aldea de Celco forest complex, held by the powerful Angelini group, to dump its industrial waste into the ocean.

The area fished by 4,000 small and medium operations will receive 27 million cubic meters of liquid industrial waste annually, untreated, via a 60-million-dollar duct.

"No one is defending the environment," Pedro Arrey, regional director for the National Committee to Defende Fauna and Flora (CODEFF), told Tierramérica. He says it was a hurried decision by the government's regional environmental commission for Bio-Bio because legislation on dumping liquid industrial waste will take effect in September.

According to Arrey, the project did not involve input from environmentalists, and before it was even approved, authorization was given to the company to begin operations.

RIO DE JANEIRO - Of the lumber extracted from the Brazilian Amazon, just 42.4 percent goes to industrialization, according to a study by the non-governmental Institute of Man and the Environment of the Amazon (IMAZON).

Furthermore, little of the related wate is used: more than half is burned or dumped, and just 24 percent is used for making charcoal and 25 percent for kilns, generating electricity, fertilizer or firewood, according to the report on 2005 forest activities in the Amazon.

The squandering is due to the transformation of cylindrical trunks into planks and the inadequate technology for extraction and processing, using "obsolete equipment", one of the report's authors, Denys Pereira, told Tierramérica.

Training, tax exemptions for new equipment and regulation for logging activities would reduce waste and deforestation, says Pereira.

GUATEMALA CITY - Most of the wetlands in Guatemala are at risk of disapparing due to "contamination, deforestation and forest fires," warns Ana Luisa Noguera, executive director of the National Council on Protected Areas (CONAP).

Of the 188 wetlands recorded in the country in 2002 by the Association for Wildlife Rescue and Conservation, just 10 are projected areas, Noguera told Tierramérica.

Between two and eight percent of Guatemala's mangrove forests disappear each year, according to the association. The trees are cut down for their lumber and for firewood. The salt water of shrimp farms also contribute to mangrove destruction.

The country's largest wetland, covering 335,000 hectares, is the Laguna del Tigre, in the northern department of Petén, which environmentalist Magali Rey Sosa says also is threatened by oil exploration, invasion by peasant farmers and the construction of clandestine landing strips by drug traffickers.

HAVANA - Cuba has stepped up its forest fire prevention efforts in February, with the beginning of the season of highest risk due to drought, which, say experts, is affecting 60 percent of this Caribbean island this year.

As part of the prevention activitites, on Feb. 28 there will be training exercises for confronting disasters of this type, according to sources from the Forest Ranger Service.

Yosvani Acosta, a specialist with the state forest service of the Agricultural Ministry in Guantánamo, about 1,000 km southeast of Havana, told Tierramérica that the fires and drought are undermining plans to reforest the province.

This situation is repeated throughout the country, which in 2005 lost some 12,000 hectares of forested land to fires -- most of which were caused by negligent human activities.