Privately protected areas in Mexico, a 2012–2023 update

In 2002, the first privately protected area (PPA) was legally “certified” by the Mexican government. The last PPA country review used data from 2012, so a decadal update is considered to be timely. By June 2023, 546 land parcels within 27 states held valid certificates as PPAs or ICCAs, for a total of 718,526 ha. PPAs include 175,006 ha of private lands plus 9,860 ha of public property, which jointly represent a 44% increase from their 2012 coverage of 128,369 ha, while community lands or “territories and areas conserved by indigenous peoples and local communities” (ICCAs) now comprise 486,082 ha. No new uncertified PPA inventory has been developed to date, but their number and territorial coverage have increased. After more than 20 years of use of the certified “voluntary conservation use areas” (ADVCs) mechanism, this review gives us a clearer and more mature picture of the benefits and limitations of using this legal tool. For example, no 10-year—the initial minimum required by law—certificates remain. Meanwhile, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s 30x30 target, with emphasis on effectively conserved and managed areas, has resulted in the development of an ADVC assessment tool, while advances toward the establishment of a legal “easement in gross” mechanism, through contractual means, have been developed for one Mexican state, which will serve as a proof-of-concept precedent for other states. Overall, certification of ADVCs has proved to be a useful tool for conservation of biodiversity and environmental services, which certainly needs to evolve to become more effective and efficient, in order to be a more widely used tool and increase its contribution for achieving Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework for Mexico

The Effects of Governmental Protected Areas and Social Initiatives for Land Protection on the Conservation of Mexican Amphibians

Traditionally, biodiversity conservation gap analyses have been focused on governmental protected areas (PAs). However, an increasing number of social initiatives in conservation (SICs) are promoting a new perspective for analysis. SICs include all of the efforts that society implements to conserve biodiversity, such as land protection, from private reserves to community zoning plans some of which have generated community-protected areas. This is the first attempt to analyze the status of conservation in Latin America when some of these social initiatives are included. The analyses were focused on amphibians because they are one of the most threatened groups worldwide. Mexico is not an exception, where more than 60% of its amphibians are endemic. We used a niche model approach to map the potential and real geographical distribution (extracting the transformed areas) of the endemic amphibians. Based on remnant distribution, all the species have suffered some degree of loss, but 36 species have lost more than 50% of their potential distribution. For 50 micro-endemic species we could not model their potential distribution range due to the small number of records per species, therefore the analyses were performed using these records directly. We then evaluated the efficiency of the existing set of governmental protected areas and established the contribution of social initiatives (private and community) for land protection for amphibian conservation. We found that most of the species have some proportion of their potential ecological niche distribution protected, but 20% are not protected at all within governmental PAs. 73% of endemic and 26% of micro-endemic amphibians are represented within SICs. However, 30 micro-endemic species are not represented within either governmental PAs or SICs. This study shows how the role of land conservation through social initiatives is therefore becoming a crucial element for an important number of species not protected by governmental PAs

Correction: the human footprint in Mexico: physical geography and historical legacies.

Using publicly available data on land use and transportation corridors we calculated the human footprint index for the whole of Mexico to identify large-scale spatial patterns in the anthropogenic transformation of the land surface. We developed a map of the human footprint for the whole country and identified the ecological regions that have most transformed by human action. Additionally, we analyzed the extent to which (a) physical geography, expressed spatially in the form of biomes and ecoregions, compared to (b) historical geography, expressed as the spatial distribution of past human settlements, have driven the patterns of human modification of the land. Overall Mexico still has 56% of its land surface with low impact from human activities, but these areas are not evenly distributed. The lowest values are on the arid north and northwest, and the tropical southeast, while the highest values run along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and from there inland along an east-to-west corridor that follows the Mexican transversal volcanic ranges and the associated upland plateau. The distribution of low- and high footprint areas within ecoregions forms a complex mosaic: the generally well-conserved Mexican deserts have some highly transformed agro-industrial areas, while many well-conserved, low footprint areas still persist in the highly-transformed ecoregions of central Mexico. We conclude that the spatial spread of the human footprint in Mexico is both the result of the limitations imposed by physical geography to human development at the biome level, and, within different biomes, of a complex history of past civilizations and technologies, including the 20th Century demographic explosion but also the spatial pattern of ancient settlements that were occupied by the Spanish Colony

Measuring MPAs in Continental North America: How Well Protected Are the Ocean Estates of Canada, Mexico, and the USA?

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a well-established conservation strategy, employed around the world to protect important marine species and ecosystems and support the recovery of declining populations. The continental waters of North America contain remarkable biodiversity, but many species face increasing pressure from overexploitation, climate change, and other anthropogenic impacts. Canada, Mexico, and the USA have pledged to protect at least 10% of their marine and coastal waters by 2020 as signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and have made efforts to establish MPAs. These MPAs vary widely in terms of levels of protection and designation processes; information that is not reflected in official statistics. To this end, we critically examined progress toward the CBD target for marine protection in continental North American waters to determine how well ocean ecosystems are protected by MPAs. We reviewed government data to determine whether MPAs met four criteria: legal designation, permanence, presence of an administrative structure, and a completed management plan. Sites that met all four criteria were categorized as “implemented.” Any sites that failed to meet one or more criterion were considered “incompletely implemented” and excluded from the analysis. We also calculated the amount of “fully-protected” MPAs in which all extractive uses are prohibited. We found that <1% of North America's continental ocean is protected, and only 0.04% is fully-protected. Canada has the least area protected with just 0.11% in implemented MPAs, and 0.01% in fully-protected MPAs. Mexico and the USA have 1.62 and 1.29% in implemented MPAs, and 0.11 and 0.03% in fully-protected MPAs, respectively. Results show that many North American MPAs are incompletely implemented and therefore currently fail to provide adequate protection. The inclusion of such sites in official government statistics can inflate the perception of how much, and how well, the ocean is protected. We outline some of the major challenges to MPA establishment in each country and offer recommendations to increase the number and effectiveness of MPAs in North America