www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

Forrest fires are continuing to spread across at least ten hectares of the El Avila national park, stretching from Avenida Baralt to La Florida as fire fighters struggle to get the blazes under control.

The National Guard are on the scene assisting the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in fighting the fires, but strong winds are currently making their jobs much more difficult as the fires continue to spread. The current blazes are around the two hundredth on El Avila in the past year.

Fire fighters are hoping for a change in weather conditions to help them bring the fires under control, but remain concerned about their ability to prevent the blazes from spreading if dry weather and strong winds persist.

Growth Response to Very High CO2 Concentrations

Summary

Plants grown in elevated CO2 environments typically exhibit increased rates of photosynthesis and biomass production. Most of the studies that have established this fact have historically utilized CO2 concentration increases on the order of 300 to 600 ppm. So what happens if the air's CO2 content is super-enriched, to a concentration on the order of 10,000 ppm? Is the effect of the extra CO2 still positive?

................Finally, in an important field study, Fernandez et al. (1998) investigated the effects of even higher CO2 concentrations (some as great as 35,000 ppm) on an herb and a tree growing in the vicinity of natural CO2 springs in Venezuela. These high CO2 concentrations stimulated the photosynthetic rates of both plants in all seasons of the year. In the dry season, this effect was particularly important; for plants exposed to elevated CO2 continued to maintain positive net photosynthetic rates, while those exposed to ambient air a few tens of meters away exhibited negative rates that, if prolonged, would be expected to lead to their eventual demise. The authors noted their work provides "a positive answer to the question of whether increases in carbon assimilation will be sustained throughout the growing season and over multiple seasons." It also demonstrated that high atmospheric CO2 concentrations, even as much as 100 times greater than the current global mean, were not detrimental to the plants investigated. Indeed, they helped them.................

www.sustain-online.org

Last July, the general assembly of the BCSD-Venezuela named its new directive board presided by Esteban Szekely, CEO of BASF-Venezuela. The other board members include the CEOs of the Venezuelan subsidiaries of Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, Cargill and Empresas Polar.

In the report presented to the assembly, the council mentioned the creation and sponsorship of a chair on sustainable development at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, a conference on sustainable development at the Institute of Higher Studies of Administration in Caracas, several workshops on key issues for personnel of companies associated with the council, as well as participation in meetings on corporate social responsibility and environmental education.

Contact: gtalamo@cantv.net

www.sun-sentinel.com By Owain Johnson Special Correspondent Posted March 18 2003

Caracas · Weighing in at about 100 pounds, the capybara is the world's largest rodent. It lives in and near rivers and lakes and is most commonly found in Venezuela's tropical wetlands. This time of year, it also tends to be found on dinner plates.

A quirk of history means that a giant rodent is to Lent in Venezuela what the turkey is to Thanksgiving in the United States, even though scientists worry that the animal's prominent role in Lenten dinners is threatening the long-term future of the species.

About 400 years ago, Spanish missionaries discovered that some indigenous communities in Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil relied for much of their protein on the meat of the capybara, an animal that no European had seen before.

The missionaries reported back to Rome that they had encountered an animal that was hairy and scaly and spent more of its time in the water than on land. They asked whether their new converts could continue to eat capybara at Lent, a time when Catholics traditionally avoid meat.

With no clear idea of what the capybara was or looked like and concerned a ban would lead to indigenous communities starving during Lent, the Vatican immediately ruled that the semi-aquatic mammal was in fact a fish.

The tradition continues to this day, and eating capybara remains part of the Lenten tradition for many families, despite the fact that the giant rodent tastes like a cross between fish and lamb.

Last year, a pound of capybara meat rose to $1.09 in the weeks running up to Easter, a considerable sum in a country where the minimum monthly wage at the time was $131 and has since fallen by more than a third.

Capybaras were once so common in areas known as the llanos, or plains, that some ranches were home to tens of thousands of the animals. Packs of the rodents crossing roads were a familiar sight.

Their numbers have fallen in recent years, though, and Edgar Useche, who advises the National Assembly on environmental issues, said the species is in sharp decline.

"Twenty years ago, you'd always see capybaras when you were driving around the llanos, but now, in some of the same areas, the people don't even know what a capybara is," Useche said.

Accurate figures for the numbers of capybaras killed in the run-up to Easter are hard to find because the majority of animals are killed by hunters without a official licenses, but the accepted figure is a minimum of 20,000 animals per year.

Useche argues that this annual cull is fatally weakening a species already suffering the consequences of increased human activity. In an area where most of the population lives in poverty, capybaras are a prime target by hunters who seek them out for their meat, their skins and their oil. Many cattle farmers shoot capybaras because the voracious rodents compete with their livestock for feed.

The science federation Fudeci is hoping to reduce pressure on the capybara by encouraging commercial farming of the species. Fudeci's director general, Ramiro Royero, has found companies interested in marketing farmed capybara meat.

Royero thinks that with proper marketing, Venezuelans could be persuaded to eat commercially produced capybara year-round. He notes that the distinctively flavored meat is high in protein, low in cholesterol and could sell for a fraction of the price of pork or beef.

Fudeci thinks that the sustainable production of capybara on ranch-style farms could provide a lifeline for the species in the wild. Commercial production would undercut demand for wild capybaras hunted illegally, as well as provide jobs and reliable income for impoverished rural areas.

"We have to learn to manage our biological diversity properly," Royero said. "The key is to add value to our natural resources and replenish them rather than wasting them."

www.zwire.com Monday 17 March, 2003 ASSOCIATED PRESS March 16, 2003

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - Nearly 700 wildfires fueled by dry conditions and high winds burned out of control in Brazil's Amazon jungle Sunday despite stepped-up efforts to battle the blazes.

The number of fires burning across the state of Roraima, which borders Venezuela and Guyana, more than doubled to 686 on Sunday, according to satellite monitoring by Brazil's environmental protection agency Ibama.

"Our fight against the fires is intensifying each day, but it's very dry and very windy up here," Ibama spokeswoman Monica Gil told The Associated Press from Roraima.

Ibama said it could not give an accurate estimate of the damaged or destroyed areas until the fires are extinguished. But early last week, when only 86 fires were recorded, 25,600 acres of forest and scrub land had burned.

The fires were sparked by farmers clearing agricultural land, and quickly got out of control because of extremely dry conditions caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, an unusual warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

About 330 firefighters and Ibama officials were fighting the blazes, along with three helicopters and army transport vehicles, Gil said. Another 92 firefighters were expected Monday.

The fires raged at the entrance of the Yanomami Indian reservation, home to the world's largest Stone Age tribe. On Friday, fires crossed about 2 miles into the reservation, Environment Minister Marina Silva said.

About 26,000 Yanomami live on a 25 million-acre reservation straddling the border of Brazil and Venezuela.

Meteorologists say rain is not likely for another week.

In 1998, severe dryness from El Nino led to wildfires in Roraima that burned 736,000 acres of forest and scrub. The fires eventually were extinguished by rain.

©Tyler Morning Telegraph 2003