Mexico News

1. U.S. drops out of Paris In our 2015 ocean top 10 list, we celebrated the adoption of the Paris Agreement as a monumental achievement for slowing the warming, acidification…

The past couple weeks have brought major news about two important new marine reserves. On November 24, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto signed a decree creating the Revillagigedo Archipelago National…

VaquitaCPR, the emergency conservation team pulled together by the Mexican government in a desperate attempt to save the vaquita from extinction, announced last Friday that its capture program had come…

Last month, the government of Mexico launched a last-ditch effort to save the Critically Endangered vaquita, a small porpoise known to reside only in the Gulf of California. A team…

When Samuel “El Sammy” Gallardo Castro was shot and killed on a Mexican beach in 2014, it could have been just another gangland killing of a drug dealer from the…

Piles of wood lie in an open area behind the main office of the Arabari Reserve Forest in West Bengal, India. Long logs and cut planks of sal trees (Shorea…

For the first time, a team of scientists has captured and then released a vaquita (Phocoena sinus), a rare porpoise in the Gulf of California, as part of a project…

A team of marine mammal experts is searching for the last vaquitas (Phocoena sinus) in the Gulf of California. They’ve gathered in northern Mexico, at the invitation of the government…

Tropical timber has earned a bad reputation. When we think of timber from lush, tropical forests, it conjures up images of valuable old-growth trees pillaged by logging companies and illegal…

PUNTA LOBOS, Mexico - Every morning at dawn, the fishermen of Punta Lobos take their boats out to the high seas to find shrimp boats and give bread, cookies, and…

Conservation scientists meeting in Mexico are warning that planned expansion of industrial monocultures in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula poses a threat to traditional agricultural practices that help maintain biodiversity and ecosystem…

Actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio has jumped into the fight to save the critically endangered vaquita together with the president of Mexico and the country’s wealthiest individual. An agreement signed…

New evidence lays out the intricate trade in animal body parts that conservation groups say are driving two marine species in Mexico’s Gulf of California closer to extinction. The battle…

The 2017 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement will be awarded to Mexican ecologist José Sarukhán on May 4 at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., for his scientific contributions to the…

It has been several months since the rare image of a jaguar was captured by a camera trap located along the Ft. Huachuca Trail in Arizona. It was the second…

GALACIA, Mexico – On a Saturday afternoon in January, Julia Carabias, one of Mexico’s most respected biologists, was making herself useful – putting a fresh coat of blue paint on…

One might assume that the biggest challenge in managing an ambitious, multinational initiative like the Barcode of Wildlife Project (BWP) stems from the cross-cultural dimensions of the enterprise. But the…

The Census of Marine Life (CoML), a 10-year international effort to determine the diversity of life found in Earth’s oceans, described over 1 million species, ranging from single-celled microbes to…

Thanks to a five-year acoustic monitoring program, conservationists have detected the rapid decline of the vaquita before it is too late – giving them one last shot to save the…

An ambitious global initiative, the Barcode of Wildlife Project unites research biologists, investigators, prosecutors, and members of law enforcement in partner countries in using DNA barcoding to combat wildlife crime.

The vaquita continues to earn its title as “the world’s most endangered cetacean species.” According to a recent report by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA),…

Uaxactún, Guatemala - Research has shown that indigenous peoples and local communities play a key role in biodiversity and forest conservation in Central America and Mexico. Drawing on case studies…

Mexico is set to get its largest-ever protected area. The new Mexican Caribbean Biosphere Reserve, estimated to cover more than 5.7 million hectares, will be spread across several municipalities, including…

From the remote mountains of Oaxaca in Mexico, scientists have described three new species of miniature salamanders that are smaller than a matchstick. These tiny creatures belong to the elusive…

A host of international trade treaties and agreements are now being negotiated globally, many of which, say critics, stand to enrich investors at the expense of the environment and democracy…

This past July, U.S. President Barack Obama hosted Mexico’s President Peña Nieto at the White House to discuss bilateral cooperation on a range of issues, including several environmental matters. The…

There were as many as 570 vaquita in the world back in 1997, but now there are fewer than 60 left — and the species is facing extinction in the…

Scientists have described a strikingly colored new species of snake from the mountains of east-central Mexico. This snake, with a vivid orange and black banding pattern on its body, belongs…

A open pit gold mine has been in the works in Sierra la Laguna Biosphere Reserve in Baja California Sur since 2007, but a new biodiversity survey may convince officials…

From September, Mexico will permanently ban the use of gillnets throughout the range of vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus) in the upper Gulf of California. With just 60 individuals remaining in…