The governor of Petén, Rudel Alvarez, is also a blogger and he describes the problems of the environmental reserves in the region, which contains about 85% of the protected areas and the Mayan Biosphere Reserve covers more than 13% of the country.

International independent reporters and bloggers visited Petén recently, with a travel grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to sort out the scientific claims about conservation and to document the stories. Their project was called "Future of Peten. They were lucky enough to visit the Mirador Basin Project and meet the Director of the Project, and presents The view from the Top of the Maya World:

El Mirador, as head archaeologist Richard Hansen enthusiastically reminded us yesterday from the top of La Danta pyramid, is a lost city loaded with superlatives:

* The first state-level civilization in the Western Hemisphere
* The largest (by volume) pyramid in the world
* The greatest concentration of Maya sites in the world

Tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of people constructed this city over 750 years starting about 500 B.C., though occupation started hundreds of years earlier.

Sadly the reserve is facing a serious environmental and social crisis, and urgent actions must be taken. Nadia Sussmand wrote about it on What if there were no eco to tour :

Today head archaeologist Richard Hansen continued our tour of monumental architecture, while discussing his plans for the development of ecotourism at El Mirador . Hansen is convinced that the only way to stop deforestation is to create a legally protected 810,000-acre no-cut area around the archaeological sites here, bounded by the natural borders of the Mirador Basin . He maintains that all logging - sustainable or not - will sooner or later lead to road-building, slash-and-burn farming, and the permanent destruction of the jungle.

The team was blogging from the field, from the very heart of the jungle, as Kara Andrade, another member told on Oasis :

The laboratory in the jungle is a small oasis of electricity and Wi-Fi in Peten's sea of rainforest darkness broken only by the drone of cicadas that is present all day. Every night, David Barreda and I move in with a bag of battery chargers, power strips, two laptops and a multitude of gadgets that allow us to connect with the world outside. We come in from the remotest stretch of jungle in Guatemala and upload like drought-stricken people to water. We are fiends at capturing video and photos and are at times overwhelmed with the amount of new content we're producing. Dispatches are coming slowly and we run with the rhythm of the generator.

Danta is the name of the Pyramid, but it is also an endangered specimen of tapir in the region. A collaborative group of university students organized to protect the danta, and to teach the community ways to protect it (people often eat tapir meat in Peten, a tasty exotic meat). Blogger Mesas de Diaologo tells us about the students from the Forestry and Environmental Studies from the Rural Guatemalan University and the Agro-forestry Sciences Institute collaborated in an action plan to protect the habitat of the tapir. The plan focuses on the use of education and the development of economic alternatives for the communities.

Global Heritage Fund is helping to save The Mirador Basin and has a detailed description of the area and a video.

Thumbnail photo by Lala Lulu

Tbilisi-based LJ user shupaka writes this (RUS) about what it feels like to be an ethnic Russian in Tbilisi now:

Today once again I've been asked - how do they treat Russians [in Georgia]? Won't it get them in trouble if they speak Russian in Tbilisi?

My mother is Russian and my mother-in-law is Russian. I asked them, just in case - how do they treat you here? Aren't they oppressing you? Mamas say - no, they aren't oppressing us.

They are Georgian citizens, these mamas of mine, and they are getting as many problems from the Russian leadership as all the other Georgian citizens.

It's easier for my mother-in-law - her parents live in Ukraine; to mama it's tougher - her father and sisters live in Siberia.

Mama speaks Georgian at work, in the street, in stores and on public transportation. With some accent, though, and not always without mistakes, and stranger often ask her: “Sadauri har?” That is, where are you from? Georgians love it when a non-Georgian can speak Georgian.

And my mother-in-law speaks Russian most of the time. And she also teaches Russian to children - a few times in the evening every week she reads the likes of [Korney Chukovsky] and [Nikolay Nosov] to the neighborhood kids. And the number of her students hasn't decreased - she has as many as she had before the occupation.

I've conducted an extremely silly experiment today - I was addressing people in Russian. On a bus, I was saying ‘ostanovite, pozhaluysta‘ ['please stop here'] instead of ‘gaacheret,' at a store I was asking for ‘butylku borzhoma‘ ['a bottle of Borjomi mineral water] instead of ‘erti bordjomi,' at a drugstore… well, et cetera. I haven't noticed any negative reaction.

Earlier this month, on Aug. 12, LJ user voinodel (Vadim Rechkalov, Russian war correspondent for Moskovsky Komsomolets) posted this “monologue” (RUS) by Ms. Lobzhanidze, a resident of Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, Russia:

- My son-in-law is Ossetian. My 8-year-old grandson would be Ossetian, too - on his father's side, that is. I myself am Russian. By blood, that is. But in my passport, I'm Georgian. They've canceled [the ‘ethnicity' line] in passports now, but my last name is Georgian, I've inherited it from my late husband. My son is Georgian in his passport, too, and by blood as well - if, of course, you look at his father's side. He's married to an Armenian. And who am I after all this - my grandson is Ossetian, while my granddaughter is Georgian - if, of course, you look at her father's side?

But I'm most concerned about my son. Anything can happen now. The [South Ossetians] will now come back from the war angry. And they'll begin… I don't even know what to expect…

I thought I was paranoid. I called [the police]. What should I do in this situation, I asked. You see, my son is Georgian. A policewoman asked: and where is he registered, what's his citizenship? I say, he's registered in Vladikavkaz, Russian citizen. He was born here, has never been to Georgia. Doesn't approve of Saakashvili's politics. But our last name is Lobzhanidze. What shall we do?

The woman listened to me carefully and said: take all precaution measures. We've been flooded by all kinds of people, she said. Try to protect him. Don't let him out in the street on his own. How old is your son? He's 30 already, I reply. How can I not let him out. And the policewoman continues: well, I understand you, the situation is tense, but we can't give every person an officer [to guard him/her]. Have there been incidents already, I ask. No, she replies, not yet…

P.S.

All the relatives of [Ms. Lobzhanidze] sit at home since Aug. 8. They don't even go to work. But that's only those who are on her husband's side. The Armenian and Russian relatives don't seem to have anything to fear. Not yet.