BUENOS AIRES - The nearly 50-percent rise in tourism in Argentina in 2002 gave national parks and protected areas a boost in admissions revenues, allowing them to improve infrastructure and step up conservation efforts.

The National Parks Administration reports that the number of visitors set a record last year. Income from park entry fees increased 18.5 percent from January to December 2002.

Those funds, which in 2001 covered 50 percent of maintenance costs, last year were responsible for 75 percent of the budget, permitting the construction of lookout points, paths and buildings, and paying for more first-aid sites and staff. Argentina has 30 national parks.

LIMA - The regional government of Pasco, in Peru's central sierra, has convened environmental groups and representatives from government ministries to set up a commission to study the impact of mining operations on the environment and human health, and to propose regulations.

Pasco is a prominent mining region of the high plains, with little agriculture and a livestock sector that reports damage from environmental contamination caused by mining practices.

A giant open-pit mine divides in two the city of Cerro de Pasco, the region's capital. Two of its districts, Champamarca and Yanacancha, are surrounded by enormous piles of mining waste that has accumulated over decades.

The evaporation of precipitation from the piles causes acid rain, while the water filtering through the rubble carries ferrous oxide and acids to the nearby San Juan and Mantaro rivers.

BOGOTA - The flow volume of Colombia's main rivers is 25 to 30 percent below average, due to the lack of rain in recent months, reports the Institute of Meteorological Studies.

The effects are beginning to be seen in the reservoirs in the northern areas, where rationing programs have been set up in response.

The Urrá hydroelectric plant is recording the lowest water levels in three years and has had to buy electricity from other plants to meet its distribution commitments.

The Urrá plant needs the Sinú River to provide 350 cubic meters of water per second, but is only receiving 45 to 50 cubic meters, says the company's president, Alfredo Solano.

MEXICO CITY - The Monarch butterfly continues to be threatened by the illegal logging of the forests that serve as its habitat part of the year, warned writer and ecologist Homero Aridjis, after reports indicated that the butterfly population was showing signs of recovery.

In 2002, millions of monarchs died as the result of an intense cold wave, in addition to the progressive decrease in forest coverage.

But last month, the monarch population reached similar numbers to those recorded in 1993 in Mexico, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

The Mexican government lacks a clear and firm policy against logging, which leaves the monarch at risk, said Aridjis, president of the environmental Group of 100 and one of the leading experts on this species in Mexico.

In the past three decades, 44 percent of the forested area where the monarch wintered was lost. The butterfly migrates up to 5,000 km from Canada and northern United States.

MANAGUA - Nicaraguan authorities began a pilot program in some of the country's central areas to raise tilapia, an exotic fish of African origins, but ecologists warn that its presence in lakes and rivers could have harmful effects.

The fish was introduced in Latin America due to its ability to adapt to tropical areas and its rapid reproduction rate.

Salvador Montenegro, of the Aquatic Resources Research Center, told Tierramérica that the tilapia is "is like a small mole, but cancerous. Introducing into the big lakes like the Cocibolca poses a threat because it feeds on animal remains, kitchen waste and animal manure. It produces great quantities of excrement, polluting the water."

Local environmentalists recommend raising the fish in separate ponds. The tilapia is already part of the local diet and is even an export. In 2000, revenues from international sales of the fish provided Nicaragua 207,000 dollars, but the next year the total fell to 64,000 dollars.

GUATEMALA CITY - By the end of this year Guatemala will have its first integrated environmental profile, a compilation of information on land use, forests, biodiversity, water and marine resources, climate, solid waste, non-renewable resources and energy.

The initiative, proposed in September 2002 by a private university, aims to study "the real economic impacts caused by environmental deterioration, such as Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and the state of the environment and its relation to poverty," Claudio Cabrera, head of the project, told Tierramérica.

The report will be updated every two years by the Environmental Institute at the private Rafael Landívar University. Dutch institutions are providing 260,000 dollars for the first 12 months of the project.

SAN JOSE - The Costa Rican government hopes that its Central American neighbors will take advantage of the upcoming meeting of the region's environment ministers, in Managua, Mar 10-14, to make commitments to improve management of protected areas.

The meeting, the first in the context of the Mesoamerican Congress of Protected Areas, will evaluate the situation of the seven Central American countries and four southern Mexican states.

The Mesoamerican region holds 597 areas with different levels of protection for preservation. They cover a total of 164,000 square km, or 22.4 percent of the region's land area.