Articles by Thelma Gómez Durán

Back in December 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador had been Mexico’s president for only a few days when he promised the public that not a single tree would be cut…

Satellite images give us a dimension of forest cover loss. From one year to the next, and sometimes in just a few weeks, a forest can be wiped off the…

In the Yucatec Maya language, Balam-Kú means “jaguar temple.” That’s the name of the biggest state reserve in Campeche, in southern Mexico. Part of the Maya rainforest, this area is…

*UPDATE: On March 30, 2021, a press release announced that the Collegiate Court of Circuit in Work and Administration Matters had reversed the decision to suspend activity on Sections 1,…

*UPDATE: On April 1, 2022, Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) said it would designate the wetlands of La Kisst and María Eugenia as “critical habitats” for the…

For several weeks in 2015, the sound of chainsaws cutting down trees was incessant in the Angangueo municipality in the Mexican state of Michoacán. When a group of people tried…

Mexico’s General Law on Sustainable Forest Development is once again in the spotlight. Despite being a recent law, approved on June 5, 2018, and applauded at the time for its…

What do countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Nepal and Namibia have in common? All four are home to rich repositories of biodiversity. But each country has also developed models for community…

The inhabitants of Culden village in northern Peru heard that the virus that causes COVID-19, the disease wreaking havoc around the world, originated in bats. So when they discovered a…

José Ramírez Talango is a retired teacher and beekeeper. When he was a child he used to walk through the jungle to reach Laguna Chakanbakán in the southeastern Mexican state…

Leticia Merino graduated from college with a degree in social psychology. But her plans to continue her studies in that field were thrown into doubt after she encountered a community…

In 2009, scientists estimated that Mexico’s tropical montane cloud forests — hillside woodlands blanketed in fog and rain — were down to 28% of their original extent. Fifty-three percent of…

Lucía Madrid spent her childhood in a land of trees and a time of flux. It was the 1980s in Mexico’s Sierra Norte de Oaxaca region, and communities were organizing…

Laura Jiménez, Manuel Herrera and Elías Santiago grew up in a land where elders proudly related how they managed to recover their forests, hearing them recount how the Mexican government…