• Fires raged in the Mexican state of Campeche this summer, with NASA satellites picking up nearly 10,000 fire alerts the state so far this year — around twice the number recorded in 2018. This puts 2019 in third place (behind 2003 and barely behind 2013) for the highest incidence of fires in the state since data collection began in 2001.
  • Of these fires, 15 percent occurred in protected areas. Several afflicted Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, one of which burned through 3,087 hectares (7,628 acres) before being extinguished.
  • Stretching across the central Yucatan Peninsula to the Guatemalan border, the Calakmul Reserve, as well as the Balamku and Balamkin state reserves that sit contiguous with it, comprise more than 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of jungle. The reserves are home to some of the country’s most impressive biodiversity and provide vital habitat to threatened animals and plants.
  • The main driver of fires in Campeche is slash-and-burn agriculture. Officials worry that fire seasons will only intensify as more people set up farms in the region, and as state funding to fight fires continues to dwindle.

CAMPECHE, Mexico —When a fire broke out in June in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in southern Mexico, more than 200 volunteer firefighters and specialists were deployed to help keep it contained. Faced with limited road access and marshy terrain, the team needed nearly three days to reach the fire and start getting the flames under control. By that time, 3,087 hectares (7,628 acres) of protected jungle had been destroyed.

Officials remain uncertain about the exact cause of the fire, but speculate that it most likely started as a result of a farmer acting careless with slash-and-burn agricultural practices, the most common cause of deforestation in the Yucatan Peninsula’s largest protected area. The jungles of Calakmul, located in the state of Campeche, normally burn within a 90-day window lasting from April to June, though fires sometimes begin as early as February and last as late as July, depending on the year.

Intact forest landscapes (IFLs) are areas of native land cover that are large and intact enough to retain their original biodiversity levels. Only one IFL remains in the Yucatan, and Calakmul Biosphere Reserve protects a large portion of it. While fire activity around Calakmul has died back in recent weeks, it has intensified in other areas. Source: GLAD/UMD; NASA FIRMS. “VIIRS Active Fires.” Accessed through Global Forest Watch on September 12, 2019.

Satellite data from NASA show that while burning in Calakmul largely followed the normal April-June season in 2019, fire activity in the surrounding areas of Campeche began ramping up in mid-February. All told, NASA satellites have picked up nearly 10,000 fire alerts in Campeche so far this year — around twice the number recorded in 2018. This puts 2019 in third place (behind 2003 and barely behind 2013) for the highest incidence of fires in the state since data collection began in 2001. Of these fires, 15 percent occurred in protected areas.

While every fire is cause for concern, officials have expressed satisfaction with the low number of instances in recent years, and with their quick and effective responses to those that have popped up as a result of clearing land for cattle ranching and other agricultural practices. But there is concern that this year’s heavy fire season may only be the start of a trend as more people move into the area to farm.

“Calakmul is one of the most protected municipalities both on the state and international level,” said Martha San Román, the director of environmental policy and economics at the Campeche Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. But she added, “What worries us at this time is population growth.”

Communities in and around Calakmul are expanding, in part because residents of less prosperous areas of Mexico come searching for available land. At the same time, farmers are beginning to transition from manual to mechanized agricultural practices, allowing them to work larger areas of land. Together, these factors portend a challenging future for the reserve.

“If we fail to find a balance between economic and social development and the environment,” San Román said, “we can’t move forward.”

Controlling slash-and-burn

Stretching across the central Yucatan Peninsula to the Guatemalan border, the Calakmul Reserve, as well as the Balamku and Balamkin state reserves that sit contiguous with it, comprise more than 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of jungle. The reserves are home to some of the country’s most impressive biodiversity, providing vital habitat to animals such as white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari), spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) and jaguars (Panthera onca). Much of the reserve also hosts the rare ciricote tree, which takes decades to reach maturity and whose precious wood is often targeted for lumber trafficking.

Dotted within this jungle are Mayan ruins. The city of Calakmul, named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002, was one of the Mayans’ most powerful urban centers more than a thousand years ago. Today, many of the approximately 27,000 residents living in or near the reserve still speak a traditional Mayan language while at home or working in their fields.

They also make use of traditional agricultural techniques, planting seeds by hand with stakes while tying string across field rows to keep them straight.

A landowner must know how to gage the strength and direction of the wind before deciding to light a fire on his property. Photo by Max Radwin for Mongabay.

These traditional techniques also involve slash-and-burn (also called “shifting”) agriculture, where farmers rotate their crops every five years from one section of land to the next while letting the nutrients in the earth replenish. Though it is illegal to burn land within the reserve, the law doesn’t apply to residents who were living there before it was founded in 1989. They can light fires as long as they stay on their properties and are used only for agricultural purposes.

Rather than persuade residents to give up slash-and-burn clearing, officials have chosen to focus their efforts on helping farmers set fires safely and at the right time.

“The work with the municipalities is essential,” San Román said. “The use of fires in agricultural activities is one of the main causes of deforestation. What we have started to do is promote strategies to prevent fires.”

When it’s time to burn, farmers are required to apply for a permit with the nearest municipal government. Not only do they have to provide the acreage of their land and the dates they intend to burn, but also the exact hours of the day they will be burning as well as a small sketch of where on the property the fire will be set.

Last year, Calakmul received more than 3,000 fire permit requests. While some farmers lack the literacy or patience to leave their fields for a full day to navigate the municipal bureaucracy, steep fines and educational workshops have won the cooperation of nearly every resident, officials said.

Annual workshops are presented to communities by municipal government to reinforce safety steps while burning. A landowner must know how to gauge the strength and direction of the wind before deciding to light a fire. Even a mild breeze can carry sparks out into dry grass, which is extremely flammable and can lead to uncontrollable brush fires. Farmers are also urged to dig trenches around their land to help prevent fires from spreading under the topsoil.

Deforested land on one side of the road contrasts with jungle on the other, outside the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. Photo by Max Radwin with SEMABICC for Mongabay.

State officials monitor satellite readings that show changes to forest cover from the previous five days. They can also show trenches being dug in preparation for illegal burning, in which case officials will travel to the area and investigate.

The threat of development

Because farming is such an arduous task when done manually, some landowners have started abandoning traditional techniques in favor of mechanization — a trend that officials worry could lead to a boom in deforestation in the years to come, as the efficiency of tractors and plows would allow farmers to harvest more land in less time. In fact, farmers already using machinery are producing yields as much as four times those produced by farmers who harvest by hand, according to the Campeche Ministry of Environmental Biodiversity and Climate Change (SEMABICC).

And not only would more rainforest be cleared to make space for more fields, but these fields would need to be burned at the end of each harvest, potentially increasing the number of yearly fires as well as the likelihood that one of them spreads out of control.

“I won’t say that it is wrong to use machinery,” said Edwin Martín, a SEMABICC technician in charge of fire and forest management. “We support people living in natural reserves with responsible fire use so as to achieve a more sustainable management of resources. We cannot encourage deforestation in areas subject to conservation and protection.”

Communities living legally within the reserves already occupy a clearly demarcated area that, in theory, should prevent them from advancing on the jungle. But SEMABICC said the allure of an increased seasonal output has already driven some property owners to burn small swaths of the tree line each year, the idea being that officials won’t notice such incremental changes.

A similar concern exists outside the northern border of Calakmul, where communities not subject to the stringent environmental regulations of the reserve can expand at an even faster rate. Officials believe that some of these communities may end up spilling into the reserve in years to come, which in a worst-case scenario could result in forced evictions and clashes with law enforcement.

Past the northern edge of the Calakmul reserve, the largely indigenous Nuevo Durango community has taken to mechanization at an especially rapid pace due to the influence of Mennonite settlements that began arriving from the northern state of Durango between 1995 and 2000. Though the Christian group embraces a simple way of life removed from modern technology, it has accepted tractors and other agricultural equipment while working in the fields.

“They don’t make sustainable use of the resources but rather opt for deforestation,” Martin said. “In a month they can clear an area and then plant corn or soybeans, then the agricultural frontier opens up and gets closer and closer to the reserve.”

Last year, Mennonite communities were responsible for over 7,400 acres of deforestation outside of the reserve. Photo by Max Radwin for Mongabay.

In some cases, the Mennonites rent land owned by local residents, SEMABICC said. But more often, they purchase the land for themselves and re-hire the locals to oversee it. In both cases, land is increasingly being worked with tractors and combine harvesters.

“What a local farmer does in a month, Mennonites do in a day,” said Paulino Jorge Tun, Nuevo Durango’s secretary commissioner.

Last year, Mennonite communities were responsible for more than 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of deforestation outside of the reserve, according to SEMABICC. They now have 12 settlements and, as the Mennonite population continues to grow, more planned for the near future.

Invaders

The prospect of communities illegally occupying land in an ostensibly protected reserve is not an entirely new idea, however; there have been illegal, or “informal,” settlements within such areas for years, albeit in small quantities.

One of them, called Candelaria, sits in the southwest portion of the Balamku state reserve. The community started forming around 30 years ago when residents from the nearby states of Tabasco, Chiapas and Veracruz found themselves without enough money to purchase land in those more expensive real estate markets, or having to escape threats from organized crime.

“One person comes after another, then comes another and another, and that’s how a community forms,” said Arturo Balam, subdirector of Balamku and Balamkin, two state reserves that share a border with Calakmul. “And with such a large community they can elect a commissioner, a leader that fights for the land.”

Members of the squatting community of Candelaria work in a cleared field. Photo by Max Radwin for Mongabay.

Residents of Candelaria argue that because they have occupied the land for more than 15 years, they have legal claim to it. Though officials disagree, residents of Candelaria continue to evade eviction by law enforcement, and are even negotiating with the government for basic resources, such as roads, water and electricity.

The community is also looking for a way to increase its agricultural output, as manual cultivation currently only yields enough for residents to be able to feed their families, not sell their crops for a profit.

“If the government helps us with a tractor we can make progress because harvesting is costly. Sowing seeds is costly. We have to have a grader,” said Alfredo Perez, a resident of Candelaria. He added, “The goal for the future is farming machinery because we can’t advance with machetes, with just our hands.”

Without title to the land, the boundaries of Candelaria and other unofficial communities in the reserve remain vague and flexible, more an approximation than an official delineation. Officials worry that if Candelaria obtains the equipment it desires, the surrounding jungle will come under threat of rapid agricultural and cattle ranching development — and, in turn, additional fires.

Not enough funding

Officials working in the reserve hope to limit the amount of deforestation in the years to come, in part by increasing surveillance of areas that are under threat. They hope to build three more bases that will serve as checkpoints, equipped with four-wheelers and trucks ready to tackle fires.

Helping that effort along is a federal program started this year to support the restoration of deforested land. Sembrando Vida, or “Cultivating Life,” grants rural landowners approximately $250 a month to restore about 2.5 hectares (6 acres). The program also supplies them with crops to help the process along.

The main concern with the program in Calakmul is that, because land must already be burnt to qualify, farmers are setting their properties on fire before applying, according to state officials. However, they have been unable to address the issue due to the difficulties of matching satellite readings of burnt land with the Sembrando Vida registry, which is at the moment only accessible to the federal government.

Some officials have also expressed concern over budgetary restrictions at both the federal and state levels, which they worry may hinder their ability to address deforestation issues as they intensify.

Deforestation in the Balamku state reserve Photo by Max Radwin with SEMABICC for Mongabay.

This year, state and federal budgets granted reserve officials less funding than in 2018 — just over $47,000 compared to more than $200,000 in 2018 — a decrease they are hoping will not become a trend.

“Not receiving sufficient resources would limit us in our ability to carry through with productive projects with the surrounding communities of the reserve,” subdirector Balam said. “Receiving sufficient funds is essential.”

In years past, 140 firefighters have been authorized across six encampments in the Balamku and Balamkin reserves. But in 2018, only 70 firefighters were authorized for four encampments. With five bases left empty, less than half the firefighters had to cover nearly twice as much ground. And if deforestation starts to intensify in the years to come, they may be stretched even thinner.

Still, officials like Balam are optimistic about the future.

“We have a lot of hope,” Balam said. “When we have financial resources; when they allow us to develop projects that have a positive impact on the conservation of natural resources, we can benefit the communities in and around the reserves. I believe that is one of the biggest hopes we have as officials, and we have all the desire to see them through.”

 

Banner image: Residents of the Calakmul, Balamku and Balamkin reserves clear land to make room for agriculture and cattle ranching. Photo by Max Radwin with SEMABICC for Mongabay.

Editor’s note: This story was powered by Places to Watch, a Global Forest Watch (GFW) initiative designed to quickly identify concerning forest loss around the world and catalyze further investigation of these areas. Places to Watch draws on a combination of near-real-time satellite data, automated algorithms and field intelligence to identify new areas on a monthly basis. In partnership with Mongabay, GFW is supporting data-driven journalism by providing data and maps generated by Places to Watch. Mongabay maintains complete editorial independence over the stories reported using this data.

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