Ecotourism and conservation efforts go hand-in-hand. What happens when the tourists disappear?
When she was 10 years old, Ana Moreno watched buses full of tourists pull into her village. They had come to see the monarch butterflies, which arrive in flurries each November and stay the winter in the Sierra Madre’s forested peaks. Moreno watched the monarch enthusiasts pour from buses, chattering to each other. She thought to herself, “How is it possible that I don’t speak English?”
Moreno went on to study tourism and learn English at university. Her goal was to become a butterfly guide and lead tours into the forest. Moreno’s father had worked as a forest ranger, and on several occasions she accompanied him up the mountain to see the monarch colonies. “I wanted to be up there every single day,” she says.
This year, however, Moreno won’t be leading tourists into the Cerro Pelón Butterfly Sanctuary above her village. “It’s going to be a really, really hard year,” she says. “If we don’t have people coming, we don’t have income.”
The forests’ best guardians
Mexico is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, home to vast swaths of forest ecosystems ranging from tropical to deciduous to cloud to evergreen. Nearly 80 percent of the forested land is owned by Indigenous groups and ejidos—communities that share land granted by the state. A majority of these communities suffer extreme poverty and rely on subsistence agriculture and remittances for survival. With few employment opportunities, many have whittled their own forests away through illegal logging and clear-cutting. But in other cases, forest communities have become the trees’ best guardians.
Across Mexico, ecotourism plays a key role in forest conservation. It addresses the twin problems of rural poverty and deforestation and can generate revenue on par with logging and clear-cutting. The influx of visitors to remote areas incentivizes locals to preserve their natural resources. In addition to protecting forests and generating income in places where jobs are scarce, ecotourism can also improve gender equity, preserve local culture, and protect wildlife.
But the coronavirus pandemic has stalled—and in some areas, halted—ecotourism from domestic and international visitors alike. What does this mean for Mexico’s forests?
Loss of tourist revenue has prompted some forest communities to return to illegal logging, while others scrape by on subsistence farming. But under pressure, solutions also tend to crystalize. Forest communities across the country are finding new ways to invite the outside world in—and protect their forests at the same time.
A lighter footprint
The UNESCO-listed Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve claims one third of the state of Querétaro. It’s a mountainous expanse of nearly one million acres where evergreen, oak, pine, deciduous tropical, and cloud forests grow. Only three percent of this land is federally owned; the other 97 percent belongs to ejidos and private landowners.
Sierra Gorda Ecotours partners with these landowners to establish ecotourism activities that generate employment alternatives to illegal logging or remittances. Since the construction of the reserve’s first ecolodge over two decades ago, a well-developed ecotourism network has flourished, comprising 15 ecolodges (each in a different ecosystem) and 53 microenterprises of artisans and restaurants.
The businesses are owned and operated by locals, many of whom are women employing other women. This ownership gives forest communities a say in decisions about the biosphere reserve’s natural resources. (In the Sierra Gorda, the forests’ biggest threat isn’t illegal logging but government public works projects like roads, dams, and electricity lines.) Laura Pérez-Arce, communication director of a five-member alliance that includes Sierra Gorda Ecotours, calls ecotourism in the region “a tool for conservation” and a way to enforce biosphere regulations.
Photograph by Jaime Rojo, National Geographic Society
