Venezuelan environmentalists sounded the alarm when President Hugo Chávez announced the partial “deallocation” of El Ávila national Park, which extends over 85,100 hectares in the mountains between Caracas and the Caribbean, in order to build housing on the mountainsides facing the sea. The 2,000 hectares that would be removed from the park “holds only tropical forest, and based on the characteristics of the mountain geography, housing can be built” for hundreds of families that lost their homes as a result of the heavy rains and landslides in November in northern Venezuela, said Environment Minister Alejandro Hitcher.

Rodolfo Castillo, with the environmental group BioParques, told Tierramérica that “the modification of the terrain and the loss of vegetation between 120 and 200 meters above sea level will increase the vulnerability of both the new settlements to be built there, with more risk of landslides, and for the urban areas located below.”