BOGOTA - Three thousand families in the northwest Colombian department of Antioquia have benefited from the government's Family Forest Ranger program for eliminating illegal coca bush by hand and protecting the environment. The initiative was developed a year and a half ago.

Representatives of the families from the towns of Necoclí and Turbo announced on Aug. 9 that they had eradicated 1,600 hectares of coca, the raw material for cocaine. The government pays 260 dollars per person every two months, and provides technical assistance to replace coca with other crops.

But the government's main approach to the problem of drug crops is to spray them with glyphosate herbicide, which last year was applied to 11,731 hectares and which environmentalists and other activists say is harmful to health and to ecosystems.

Ricardo Vargas, Colombian representative of Acción Andina, a group that studies the illicit drug trade in the region, told Tierramérica that the manual elimination of coca crops should be part of an integrated policy for local development.

MEXICO CITY - Illegal loggers are destroying the sanctuaries of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) in Mexico, says Homero Aridjis, head of the environmentalist Group of 100.

''This proves that government officials are inept in ecology and cannot escape the category of 'novice bureaucrats','' the Mexican activist and writer told Tierramérica.

The authorities announced on Aug. 8 the deployment of dozens of soldiers to halt the illegal logging of the 'oyamel' tree (Abies religiosa) where the monarchs make their winter home.

The measure, says Aridjis, was too little and too late, because ''the mafias'' that cut down the forests are armed and have entered the natural sanctuaries at thousands of points.

Every year, the monarchs migrate 5,000 km from the Great Lakes Region of Canada and the United States to central Mexico.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, 44 percent of the 52,000 hectares where these majestic butterflies winter have been degraded in the past three decades.

LIMA - Even now that the valves are open on the 700-km natural gas pipeline that extends to the Peruvian capital from the Camisea jungles in the south, criticisms of the project continue to heat up.

The National Society of the Environment (SNA) asked the Inter-American Development Bank, which financed the pipeline, for an independent audit of the impacts of the pipeline, which began operating on Aug. 5. The group also demands an impact study of the natural gas fractioning plant to be built on the southwestern bay of Paracas, located next to a nature preserve.

SNA president María Elena Forondo rejected assurances from Energy Ministry Jaime Quijandría that the ecological and social effects are minimal.

According to Forondo, the construction of the pipeline displaced local families, hurt wildlife, and led to previously unknown diseases among 80 percent of the residents of the Nahua Kugapakori reserve.

BUENOS AIRES - The Argentine office of the environmental watchdog group Greenpeace has called on the government to normalize the operations of the Nuclear Regulatory Authority, an independent body created in 1987 to regulate and monitor nuclear power plants and supervise the transport of radioactive materials.

In late 2001, the government reduced the Authority's board from six to just three members. The posts that were eliminated were the ones that the 1987 law reserved for individuals designated by Congress.

Since then the board has been operating with just three people, and now the government has named retired general Raúl Racana to head the agency.

''We ask that the complete board be reinstated and that the designation of the military officer be avoided in order to prevent the Authority's loss of autonomy,'' Greenpeace spokeswoman Mariana Walter told Tierramérica.

GUATEMALA CITY - Guatemalan environmentalists are demanding that President Oscar Berger call off the processing of 360 applications for licenses to mine for gold, silver and nickel.

''They are going to hurt the country with the excuse that they are helping the poor communities, but they don't take into account the destruction of natural resources,'' Magalí Rey Rosa, head of the MadreSelva Collective, told Tierramérica.

The Canadian company Montana began mining operations in January to extract gold and silver in the southwestern department of San Marcos, ''and in that area there live more than 30,000 people,'' said Rey Rosa.

''The company will hire around one thousand people the first year to handle explosives, but only 180 will have permanent jobs in the 10 years for which Montana holds the permit. And that is no benefit,'' she said.

Tierramérica did not receive a response from Montana, but the company has responded to criticisms with assurances that it has systems in place to ensure protection of the environment and of the health of its employees.

TEGUCIGALPA - Honduran civil society groups and local authorities last week planted some 15,000 trees in an effort to reforest El Conejo and El Tigre islands in the Gulf of Fonseca, located on the Pacific coast and near the El Salvador border.

They planted fruit and lumber trees, as well as other species aimed at protecting the environment and ''vindicating sovereignty,'' Governor Soraya Reyes told Tierramérica. Reyes is head of the department of Valle, which encompasses the islands that were part of a territorial dispute with El Salvador.

The case was settled in 1992 in an international ruling that granted Honduras two-thirds of the disputed territory, including El Conejo and El Tigre.

Jorge Varela, of the Committee for the Defense of Flora and Fauna in the Gulf of Fonseca, told Tierramérica that the reforestation plan is to help preserve endangered plants and animals, and to protect the watersheds that supply thermal energy in the area.