Deforestation Spawns Creeping Desert in Central Argentina
Deforestation Spawns Creeping Desert in Central Argentina
By Fabiana Frayssinet
RÍO CEBALLOS, Argentina , Dec 6 2013 (IPS) - This small town in the semi-arid central Argentine province of Córdoba now has a 24-hour hotline for people to report their neighbours for sprinkling their lawns or using water to clean off the sidewalks.
The water shortage is felt throughout the province, but it is especially bad in the most populous areas – the provincial capital Córdoba, the Sierras Chicas hills to the northwest of the city, and the Punilla valley.
Córdoba has the highest level of deforestation in Argentina. All that remains is five percent of the 12 million hectares of native forest that the province had at the start of the 20th century
And fires that broke out in August and September devoured 40,000 more hectares of forests and grasslands in the hills.
“Between 1998 and 2002, the equivalent of 67 football fields was deforested every day – an appalling figure,” Raúl Montenegro, the president of the Foundation for the Defence of the Environment (FUNAM), told IPS.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/going-semi-arid-arid-central-argentina/