The Paraná Ecologist Forum this month filed a claim to prevent the annulment of an emergency environmental decree that bans logging of native forests and riverside jungles in the northeast Argentine province of Entre Ríos, home to 21 percent of the country's plant species. The decree was issued in 2003 by the provincial government in reaction to the “alarming reduction” of the forest resulting from the advance of the soybean farming frontier.

But this month the new provincial government overturned that measure by issuing a new decree.

The 2003 decree protected at least 85 tree species that are endemic to Entre Ríos, and some 2,000 plants of which 500 have medicinal value, according to the text itself.

The legal claim states that the new decree violates environmental preservation standards incorporated into the Argentine constitution in 1994.

Jorge Daneri, attorney and coordinator of the Forum, told Tierramérica that the reversal lacks technical merits.