Mexico steps up battle against illegal logging

MEXICO CITY - Mexico is cracking down harder on the illegal loggers who are razing the nation's forests, including a prized butterfly reserve that draws thousands of tourists each year.

Environment Minister Alberto Cardenas said on Tuesday that Mexico arrested 103 people in 129 forest raids over the past six months -- compared to just 31 arrests in all of 2003 -- and secured the equivalent of 1530 truckloads of illegally harvested lumber.

The ministry, which estimates Mexico is losing 520,000ha of forest each year, will also use its bigger budget to step up surveillance in 2005 using helicopters, small planes, satellite images and troops, and will start using a nationwide database.

"We are expanding the scheme and making use of information and experience from 2004, and we will advance, on the path to 2006, towards the elimination of illegal logging," Cardenas told a news conference.

Mexico, a net importer of lumber, has been fighting for years against organized gangs of illegal loggers that are thinning out its jungles and forests -- regarded as precious national heritage as well as home to a key commodity -- and terrorizing local peasants.

In a country where kidnappings and carjackings are run of the mill, the illegal timber trade is equally ruthless. The gangs are frequently armed and work at night to avoid detection, often forcing indigenous locals into selling their trees.

They have also attacked police, government inspectors and journalists, built roadblocks to retake confiscated wood and stormed jails to free workmates, according to media reports.

"Three years ago we had a budget of 200 million pesos ($25.2 million) the forestry sector, now we have a budget of more than 2 billion pesos," said Manuel Reed, director general of national forestry commission CONAFOR.

The government's biggest battle is over the state-protected 54,000ha Monarch butterfly reserve in central Mexico, whose highland fir forests have shrunk by nearly half since 1968, despite massive planting operations.

Hundreds of millions of Monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico from the United States and Canada each year, arriving in a golden cloud that attracts some 200,000 visitors.

During their four-month stay they depend on fir trees for shelter in the cold mountain winters and even small holes in a forest canopy can expose them to fatally cold temperatures.

Another forest seen as endangered is the Lacandon Rainforest, home of the Zapatista rebels who are fighting for indigenous rights. It is the hemisphere's most biologically diverse jungle after the Amazon.

- REUTERS