Mexico To Pay To Conserve Forests
Copyright 2000 Associated Press
November 10, 2000
MEXICO CITY - Seeking to reverse damage to the winter nesting grounds of the monarch butterfly, the government on Thursday expanded a reserve covering central Mexico forests and joined with international groups to pay inhabitants not to log the area.
The announcement comes two months after release of a study showing that 44 percent of the fir forests that shelter the migrating butterflies during their annual stopover from the United States and Canada had been damaged or destroyed over the past 29 years.
President Ernesto Zedillo announced a decree that will link several existing mountaintop nature reserves in a continuous corridor, adding a 100,000-acre buffer zone around the current 40,000-acre reserve.
The World Wildlife Fund and the Mexican Fund for Natural Conservation have joined with the government to create a $5 million fund to compensate the estimated 60,000 inhabitants of the reserve for lost logging rights.
The cool shade of the forest in which the monarchs drape themselves by the millions like a spectacular orange-and-black carpet is a necessary piece of their migratory puzzle.
The forest protects them from excessive cold, rain and dry winds, but it's being cut down piecemeal by local communities and big logging companies.
''Linking an economic incentive system to the declaration of a protected area is an innovative concept in Mexico,'' former WWF country representative Guillermo Castilleja said.
He explained that in the past, land-use limitations imposed within such protected areas have ''given few options to landowners,'' and led them to increase illegal activities like logging.
Zedillo also announced that the World Bank-administered Global Environmental Facility has offered $60 million to help fund the expansion and administration of the monarch and other reserves.
After announcing the measures, Zedillo said ''we trust that our neighbors to the north will be able to redouble their efforts to protect the monarch butterflies' route,'' an apparent reference to the possible effects of U.S. genetically modified crops on the butterflies.
Each year, a 3,000-mile migration takes successive generations of butterflies from the United States and Canada back to the same wintering grounds in Mexico, a process not yet fully understood by scientists.