Improving forest management and restoring forest landscapes in Mexico
Latin America is a deforestation hotspot. In the last 50 years, 94% of mammal, bird, fish, reptile, and amphibian populations have declined, and 40% of forests have been lost already — mainly due to land use change for agriculture and livestock. We must act now.
That’s why SIG, WWF Switzerland and WWF Mexico, together with local and national partners, are joining forces to protect and restore key forests in Mexico for people, climate, and biodiversity while creating enabling conditions to scale efforts nationwide.
Launched in late 2022, this project focuses on the Central Pacific Landscape which is home to some of Mexico’s richest nature. The project aims to improve landscape management of 100,000 hectares, and an additional 750 hectares of degraded forest will be reforested and restored with native plants.
As well as providing funding, SIG is involved in project coordination, monitoring, and impact measuring to ensure that projects on the ground deliver biodiversity improvements, positive social impacts, restoration of landscapes, and hectares of thriving forests.
Connecting forest ecosystems to save the jaguar
The Central Pacific Landscape acts as a superhighway connecting Mexico’s forest ecosystems – which is fundamental to the survival of highly mobile species such as the jaguar. Jaguars are essential to the forest ecosystems they inhabit but are increasingly threatened by rapid habitat destruction and their numbers are falling.
Saving the jaguar is key to saving the forest. Conserving them can create wider benefits including conserving and restoring the forest where they live, enhancing biodiversity, regulating the climate, and improving human wellbeing.
Through our flagship project, realized by WWF Mexico and facilitated through WWF Switzerland, we hope that by conserving jaguars we will help to secure vast territories in the Central Pacific Landscape that are at risk of being lost. These territories provide vital ecosystem services to local inhabitants. Therefore, protecting the jaguar can indirectly benefit human survival and livelihoods. By integrating wildlife-friendly productive practices with jaguar conservation, the project will also help ensure that humans and jaguars can coexist in harmony.
Engaging and strengthening local communities
The region not only provides food and water for people while protecting them from hurricanes and tropical storms, but it is also home to different cultures and languages within the Mexican culture.
We know local communities hold the key to unlock new and successful ways of development where nature is at the center of their decisions. SIG and WWF are working directly with local communities to restore and improve the landscape management of the forest.
Building on fruitful existing partnerships and successful previous work conducted by WWF, we are implementing high quality forest landscape restoration interventions that will create tangible benefits for local communities. The holistic interventions promote diverse land use and management practices across the entire landscape, engaging multiple stakeholders, including vulnerable groups in planning and decision-making regarding restoration and management activities.
Read about our other partnership project
Protecting biodiversity in Malaysia
Ulu Muda Forest Complex in Malaysia consists of close to 164,000 hectares of abundant forest across eight connecting forest reserves. It is one of the last remaining large intact lowland forests in the world and home to a huge diversity of plant and animal species. We aim to improve landscape management of more than 170,000 hectares of forest and pilot the restoration of 25 hectares of degraded forest in the region.
All photos © or used with permission of WWF.