Algeria will re-route part of an US$11 billion highway linking it to Morocco and Tunisia so as not to harm a major Mediterranean wetland threatened by the project, a government minister said in remarks published on Monday. Environmentalists and journalists warned in a petition to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika last month the El Kala coastal park of marshes and forests would eventually disappear unless the 1,200 km (750 mile) road intended to link Algeria to Tunisia and Morocco was routed around it.

The road was due to be built across the 800 sq km (300 sq miles) northeastern park, home of many varieties of predator birds, fox, lynx, tortoise and wild cat, under a plan to build the first direct motorway between Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. The government had decided to "postpone the implementation of 15 km of the road situated inside the perimeter of El Kala park," Public Works Minister Amar Ghoul told El Watan newspaper.

To seek an alternative, the authorities had set up a commission involving the ministries of public works, agriculture and environment for "permanent consultation and periodical reports as to the implementation of the project".  "We have ordered the national motorways agency to widen the consultation to academics, experts, national associations and our partners," he said. "Today, we can affirm as for us that there is no longer a problem concerning El Kala park."

Environmentalists and worried members of the public had said that by building the road across the park, the government would be breaking a commitment it entered into under Algerian law when it created the park in 1983 to protect the area from environmental damage. The park contains one site that Algeria has undertaken to protect under the 1971 Ramsar Convention on the protection of wetlands.
(Planet Ark, 03/07/2007)