legal

Espino land full of sand

Ideally, Rodolfo Charro Espino, President Martin Torrijos´s uncle, would be ordered to reforest the mangroves he has been accused of destroying. That is the opinion of Harley Mitchell, chief legal counsel for the Autoridad Nacional del Ambiente (Anam).

The area in Punta Chame allegedly ravaged by Espino has been covered over with 1 to 2 meters of sand, which only weeds can penetrate; all that remains of the mangrove forest is a few stumps and ash.

In April 2007, Anam authorities reported that 38 hectares along the Punta Chame coast, 26 of which were mangrove forests, had been destroyed.

Espino was fined for not submitting an Environmental Impact Study before beginning work on the project he planned for the site.

Earlier this week, Judge Ricardo Mazza ruled that prosecutors had failed to demonstrate that Espino had committed a crime against the environment, insofar as they couldn´t prove that Espino had caused "irreversible" damage to the ecosystem in question.

Mazza has since informed the Autoridad de los Recursos Acuáticos de Panamá (Arap) of his decision in a statement indicating that Espino had already replanted 10 trees for every one cut down.

The Arap attached a report from April 26, 2007 to its case file which claimed that Espino had finished reforesting 1.76 hectares of the site, but that 60 percent of the new growth had been lost. The report did not reveal how.