Mexico’s President Safeguards 160 million Acres for Environmental Conservation!
Coronado Islands, offshore of the US-MEXICO border, Pacific Ocean, Baja California, Mexico (Ralph Lee Hopkins /)
Wonderful! On December 5th, 2016 at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity being held in Cancun, Mexico’s President, Pena Nieto, signed decrees creating four new biological reserves and five other areas – protecting 160 million acres for environmental conservation! Additionally, Mexico is joining a group of nations that have made commitments to protect 10% of their maritime areas. Mexico has designated 23% of it’s sea surface to be protected.
The new decrees establish protection of 3 million acres of waters in the Pacific Islands, including the the Mexican Caribbean, a large deep area of ocean from Chiapas state to Nayarit, the west coast of the Baja California Peninsula, and the Mexican Deep Pacific. These include important reef systems with unique biodiversity.
Reserves created protect land and sea on both coasts:
The Mexican Caribbean Biosphere Reserve is a 5.75 million hectare marine protected area on the eastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in the Caribbean Sea. The area includes half the length of the Mesoamerican Reef.
The Pacific Islands Biosphere Reserve is a new 1.16 million hectare biosphere reserve is on the west coast of the Baja California Peninsula in the Pacific Ocean.
The deep-sea Pacific Biosphere Reserve is a 57.78 million hectare deep-sea multi-use marine protected area newly created off the Mexico’s Pacific coast, and includes the water column below 800 meters which hosts fragile seabed ecosystems.
A couple great quotes:
“Either we change our way of life to stop the loss of biodiversity, or this loss will change our lives forever,”
~ Pena Niet, President of Mexico
“For the first time, through the efforts of all parties, we are really speaking meaningfully to one another about the real value of biodiversity to tourism, to agriculture, to forestry, to fisheries – to the very lifeblood of our economies.”
~ Erik Solheim, Executive Director of the UN Environment Program
Thanks for helping preserve our environment for the future!
Read more about the decrees and protection on ens-newswire.com