Mexico
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Mexico City’s mayor plans to reduce pollution by building more roads
Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has come a long way in the last decade — too far, some environmentalists would argue. O, brador. Photo: Gobierno del Distrito Federal. In February 1996, AMLO (as the Mexican press calls him) was arguably the country’s most prominent environmentalist, organizing a string of high-profile protests in his […]
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Threatened sea turtles find allies in Baja
To be an endangered sea turtle near Punta Abreojos on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula is to be a lucky animal. In this remote fishing village, the local fishing cooperative cracks down on any member caught with a turtle. For the first offense, you lose fishing privileges for three months, and must instead don a hairnet and […]
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On the Mexican coast, little shrimp are causing big trouble
Just above the high-tide mark on the coast of northern Mexico, elegant fingers of pitaya cacti rise far above the surrounding mesquite trees. Roseate spoonbills and frigatebirds sail silently overhead, a dolphin skirts the tangle of mangroves near the shore, and a fishing boat sputters out to the Sea of Cortez. On this muggy, almost […]
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David Brower leaves a legacy for dolphins
The one-year anniversary of the death of environmental legend David Brower has come and gone, just a week after the U.S. Department of Justice decided not to appeal a dolphin protection lawsuit the Earth Island Institute filed with Dave back in 1999. Dolphins on the run. Photo: NOAA. For reasons that are still unknown, a […]
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Threats to Mexican environmentalists continue
Two political associates of peasant environmentalists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera have narrowly survived an apparent assassination attempt, raising grave questions about Montiel and Cabrera’s own safety following their Nov. 8 release from jail by Mexican President Vicente Fox. Rodolfo Montiel. Felipe Arriga, the secretary general of the Ecologist Organization of the Mountain of Petatlan […]
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The border patrol is threatening two endangered cats in Texas
The Texas-Mexico border has long been a setting for political skirmishes, a conflict zone where figures hide in shadows hoping to find a loophole in the paramilitary operations that attend the Rio Grande, the river that separates the U.S. from its southern neighbor. This ocelot doesn’t have nine lives.Photo: U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife. […]
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Fox Guarding the Penhouse
To the disappointment of environmental and human rights activists, a Mexican judge on Tuesday rejected evidence that two environmentalists had been tortured into confessing to drug and weapons charges. Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, who have been sentenced to seven and 10 years in prison respectively, led peasant farmers in Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero […]
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Framing: the Debate
A judge in Mexico is expected to issue a ruling within days on the appeal of two environmental activists who have been convicted of illegally possessing drugs and guns even though the country’s National Human Rights Commission has found that they were framed. The two activists, Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, say they were arrested […]
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One man taxes his way to a healthy relationship with the earth
Dev Carey is a tall, handsome man with a Ph.D. in ecology. He can swing dance like a pro, identify every plant in the meadow outside his house, and talk nervous youths into rappelling off cliffs. He can do many things, but one thing he can’t do is separate himself from the morality of any […]
