VENEZUELA: A push by Venezuela to attract tourists and boost its flailing economy by building infrastructure including runways and hotels is doing environmental damage to ecologically delicate areas, especially fragile Caribbean coral reefs already threatened by climate change, conservationists, scientists, government sources and locals say.

The government of President Nicolas Maduro, who blames US sanctions for his country’s economic crisis, has called tourism the economy’s “secret weapon.”

The push has so far failed to attract foreign investors, sources say, despite a Tourism Ministry meeting with French businesspeople and public overtures from Maduro to investors as recently as this month.

But the infrastructure effort is already drawing criticism from biologists, activists and locals, with one conservation group alleging at least one major infrastructure project is illegal.

The runway at the main airport serving Los Roques National Park — an archipelago of 45 islands, cays and crystalline waters spread over 550,000 acres in the Caribbean and recognized by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands — was expanded to 1,300 meters this year from 800 meters, allowing larger planes to land.

The extension destroyed coral, mangroves and a nesting beach for the critically endangered Eretmochelys imbricata turtle, covering it with asphalt and rocks, “among other disturbances that will affect the natural resources of the park,” the Venezuelan Ecological Society said in a report.

Maduro, who has also promoted foreign investment in a project to construct 10 hotels on the nearly virgin La Tortuga Island, says his plans respect the environment.

“Important investors from all over are coming, many from the Arab world, many from Turkey, many from Iran, from China, from India, from Brazil to invest in tourism,” he said on state television in November, hailing “the growth of hotels, guesthouses and tourist services across the country.”