- A Mongabay analysis has found that almost half of Mexico’s 232 federally protected areas — 108 of them — do not have management plans.
- Among those without plans are protected areas that were decreed more than 50 years ago even though, by law, the environmental ministry has one year to publish plans after a decree is issued.
- Some National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) officials and researchers told Mongabay the backlog is due to funding issues, unrealistic timelines and a fault in the country’s application of international conservation policy.
- Without protected area management plans, park managers, conservationists and communities have no clear roadmap to guide them, and areas can remain vulnerable to threats and overexploitation.
An independent analysis by Mongabay found that almost half of Mexico’s 232 federally protected areas (46.5%) do not have protected area management plans. Among the 108 without plans are protected areas that were decreed more than 50 years ago, even though, by law, the environmental ministry has one year to publish plans after a decree is issued.
The backlog is due to funding issues, unrealistic timelines and a fault in the country’s application of international conservation policy, the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) officials and researchers told Mongabay. This policy, they said, overemphasizes the expansion of protected areas while paying less attention to the actual management of the site.
The three oldest protected areas without plans — Cerro de Garnica National Park in Michoacan, Los Mármoles National Park in Hidalgo, and Cumbres del Ajusco National Park near Mexico City — were decreed almost 90 years ago in 1936.
In Bajos del Norte National Park, a protected area that was decreed in 2024 and still has no protected area management plan, “extractive activities continue to be as current and functional as they were before the National Park decree,” said Miguel Alejandro Rivas Soto, an ecologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and project director at Ponguinguiola A.C., a community organization. He explained over WhatsApp messages that “since there is no management plan, there are no clear rules of what can and cannot be done.”
The coniferous forests of Campo Verde, a Mexican Flora and Fauna Protection Area that was first decreed in 1938, are home to black bears (Ursus americanus), golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) and cougars (Puma concolor). Gilberto Pozo Montuy, the executive director of Conservación de la Biodiversidad del Usumacinta A.C. (COBIUS A.C.), told Mongabay the absence of a plan for Campo Verde “not only affects the conservation of ecosystems and protected species but also generates uncertainty for local communities and actors involved in the management of the territory.”
Size matters
According to Mongabay’s analysis, most of Mexico’s smallest protected areas do not have protected area management plans, whereas the largest protected areas do. Out of the smallest 50 protected areas, only 5 (10%) have plans, whereas 36 of the 50 largest protected areas do (72%).
“If you don’t have the resources to do the management plans, you concentrate on the ones that are going to have a bigger effect,” Juan Bezaury-Creel, the director of the NGO Fundación BDM BioDiversidad Mexicana, told Mongabay over a phone call. “You have to get more bang for your buck.”
The three largest protected areas, which include the Pacífico Mexicano Profundo Biosphere Reserve (43.6 million-hectare, or 107.7 million-acre), the Revillagigedo National Park (14.8 million-hectare, or 36.6 million-acre) and the Caribe Mexicano Biosphere Reserve (5.7 million-hectare, or 14 million-acre), all have management plans that were published a year or two after the protected areas were decreed.
In Mexico, there are approximately 98 million hectares (242 million acres) of federally protected areas, of which 84.3 million hectares (208.3 million acres) are covered by a protected area management plan. While just 53% of the 232 protected areas have management plans, this represents 86% of the land area of all protected areas.
However, even some larger protected areas do not have management plans, such as the two national resources protection areas C.A.D.N.R. 043 Estado de Nayarit (2.1 million hectares, or 5.2 million acres) and the C.A.D.N.R. 004 Don Martín (1.5 million hectares, or 3.7 million acres), and the Bajos del Norte National Park (1.3 million hectares, or 3.2 million acres).
The lack of protected area management plans could be due to the country’s focus on increasing the percentage of land under conservation to meet international conservation policies, such as the “30 by 30” goal of preserving 30% of the world’s land and ocean area by 2030, Malena Oliva, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told Mongabay.
To comply with one of the Aichi targets, now Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), governments are paying too much attention to the “how much to conserve” and not enough on the “how to conserve.”
“I think it’s really dangerous because many actions and many decisions are being taken in response to these international commitments,” Oliva told Mongabay over a video call. “If you don’t have a management program, there’s nothing being done there or who knows what’s being done.”
An unrealistic goal?
The process of creating a protected area management plan can be long and complex as it includes preliminary studies, consultations with affected communities, government agencies and NGOs, and other important actions. For this reason, Bezaury-Creel believes the one-year deadline is unrealistic.
“The latest management programs have become more scientifically robust,” Emma Villaseñor Sánchez, a researcher for the Mexican government’s Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECIHTI), told Mongabay over a video call. “There are more scientists involved, more bibliographic reviews carried out, it’s more extensive, more in-depth.”
But despite advances on a scientific level, social aspects — such as engaging with local and Indigenous communities — are still lacking, she said. “There are skills needed to integrate the social perspective that are not available, and this is costing a lot of work. There is a lot of conflict between the conservation values of the universities, the conservation NGOs and the National Park management itself with the communities. Participatory processes get stuck for a long time.”
Elections can also cause delays due to changes in the configuration of officials, which often require an adjustment period. Last month, Mongabay reported that one year after the government announced the creation of 20 new protected areas, the country’s environment ministry had failed to publish a single protected area management plan. Over the course of that year, Mexican voters elected a new president, which led to changes that some officials blame for the delays in protected area management plans.
Joaquín Núñez Medrano, the secretary of the Union of Forestry and Agricultural Ejidos Hermenegildo Galeana A.C. (Unión de Ejidos Forestales y Agropecuarios Hermenegildo Galeana, or UEFAHG), who lives inside part of the Sierra Tecuani protected area established one year ago, told Mongabay that the change in government contributed to the delays in his area.
Funding issues
CONANP is one of the many sectors that has been badly hit by funding cuts in recent years. According to an analysis of Mexico’s draft budget for 2025 by Noroeste Civil Society for Environmental Sustainability (NOSSA), the government agency will see its budget reduced by 42% compared to 2024. It is the lowest budget since 2006, with 1,001 million pesos (about $50 million) for the management of the country’s 232 protected areas.
The E016-16 program, dedicated to the conservation and management of protected natural areas, will see its budget reduced by 41.5% compared to 2024, with 118 million pesos (about $5.7 million) compared to 202 million (about $9.7 million) last year.
But sometimes, money is not the issue. Gina Chacón, the public policy director for Wildland Network’s Mexico Program, told Mongabay that even if protected areas generate a large amount of income from entrance fees, it doesn’t mean that plans will be created any quicker.
The Cañón del Sumidero National Park in Chiapas, for instance, was first decreed in 1980 but does not yet have a protected area management plan. Chacón said it is one of the areas that has generated the most income through entrance fees in Mexico over the last few years. In 2023, it generated 19.1 million pesos (about $9.2 million), of which 275,264 pesos (about $13,355) was reinvested into CONANP.
“This natural protected area is already generating some important income for it to be properly managed,” Chacón said. “Unfortunately, we are still wondering why the authorities don’t do the diagnosis, don’t contact the specialist and don’t sit at the table with all the communities interested in this.”
Meanwhile, in Cañón del Sumidero, the entire Grijalva River basin suffers from contamination due to human activity, as there’s untreated discharge of wastewater into the river by many upstream human settlements. This pollution, which is exacerbated during times of heavy rainfall, is a risk to critically endangered species, such as the Central American river turtle, or the hickatee (Dermatemys mawii), as well as other vulnerable species, including the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus).
According to a report by NOSSA, in 2023, the amount of money collected from entrance fees was 329 million pesos (about $15.9 million), which was 45% more than in 2022. That year, 52% of the revenue generated from protected areas was allocated to the payment of fees and contributions to international organizations, rather than federal protected area management.
“While these areas are generating revenue that might be reinvested for their own benefit, we see that authorities are using that money for other purposes instead of for conservation programs,” Chacón said. “They are still related to environmental protection, but it doesn’t matter. This money should be invested in natural protected areas and the federal government should consider other funds for covering those.”
Banner image: Green macaws (Ara ambiguus) in the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Biosphere Reserve, a protected natural area located in southeastern Mexico. Image by Emma Villaseñor.
Mexico misses one-year deadline to submit new protected areas’ management plans
Citations :
Chacón, G. I. (coord.), Velasco, A., Martin, D. (2024). Cuidar lo que importa: el presupuesto para el cuidado del ambiente y las áreas naturales protegidas en el PPEF 2025. Análisis y recomendaciones. Noroeste Sociedad Civil para la Sustentabilidad Ambiental – NOSSA. Retrieved from: https://nossamexico.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/NOSSA_CLQI2025_101224_FIN_lt.pdf
Oceana. (2021). Zonas de protección marina bajo amenaza: Casos de Pesca Ilegal en Áreas Marinas Protegidas y Zonas de Refugios Pesqueros. doi:10.5281/zenodo.4876525
Oliva, M. & Frapolli, E. G. (2024). Conservation backfire: Local effects of international protected area policy. Environment Science & Policy, 153, 103676. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103676
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