[Animals] Mexico: «Deforestation is increasing here. If this continues, the monarch butterfly will no longer arrive, it will look for other sites »

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Ten men take the machete and go to the mountain. Between oyameles, pines and oaks, they walk through paths that they already know by heart. The next day, ten other men will do the same. His commission is that the trees that inhabit their lands remain standing, that no one tries to cut them down.

Participating in the surveillance tours is one of the various tasks to be carried out by the 260 ejidatarios that are part of El Rosario, one of the 57 ejidos and 13 indigenous communities of Michoacán and the State of Mexico with territory within the Mariposa Biosphere Reserve. Monarch, a protected area known to the world because its forests winter, after a long journey of four thousand kilometers, the monarch butterfly.

Surveillance tours are done every day; It is a way of "taking care of us", remarks the ejido Adrián Cruz, 59 years old and a resident of Rincón de San Luis, a town in the El Rosario ejido.

But the conservation of these forests - which are much more than butterflies, they are the territory on which the life and future of ejidos and communities depend - face more and more challenges: the ejidatarios who own these lands have seen an increase in the extreme weather events, how native trees are replaced by avocado plants around the reserve and how the presence of organized crime groups is increasingly evident.

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Pay to keep

In November 2000, the Mexican government expanded the Biosphere Reserve to 56 thousand hectares (in 1986 only 16 thousand had been protected), with the aim of guaranteeing the conservation of the forests where the main hibernation sites of the monarch are located. .

The ejidos and communities that were in the core zone were prohibited from felling trees, even if they had permission and respected forest management plans. That ban sparked anger and resistance.

“At that time, in some communities they commented that we cared more about the butterfly and not about the lives of them and their children; that we didn't care if they died of hunger, as long as the forest was there for the butterfly, ”explains biologist Guadalupe del Río, founder of Alternare, a non-governmental organization that works in the region before the extension of the reserve.

 

Link: https://elcomercio.pe/tecnologia/ecologia/mexico-aqui-va-aumentando-la-deforestacion-si-esto-sigue-asi-la-mariposa-monarca-ya-no-va-a-llegar-va-a-buscar-otros-sitios-noticia/