Lacandon Jungle - Environment

Environment

The Lacandon has approximately 1.9 million hectares stretching from southeast Chiapas into northern Guatemala and into the southern Yucatán Peninsula. The Chiapas portion is located on the Montañas del Oriente (Eastern Mountains) centered on a series of canyonlike valleys called the Cañadas, between smaller mountain ridges oriented from northwest to southeast. It is bordered by the Guatemalan border on two sides with Comitán de Domínguez to the southwest and the city of Palenque to north. The core of the Chiapas forest is the Montes Azules Biosphere reserve, but it also includes some other protected areas such as Bonampak, Yaxchilan, Chan Kin, Lacantum and the communal reserve of La Cojolita. Dividing the Chiapas part of the forest from the Guatemalan side is the Usumacinta River, which of the largest in Mexico and the seventh largest in the world based on volume of water. The area has a mostly hot and humid climate (Am w" i g) with most rain falling from summer into fall, with an average of 2300 to 2600 mm per year. There is a short dry season from March to May when as little as thirty mm falls. The average annual temperature s 24.7C. The abundance of rain supports a large number of small rivers and streams many of which are fast moving and have waterfalls, such as the Agua Azul and the Lacanja waterfalls. The soils of the area are mostly clay and lacking phosphorus but sufficient to support a large diversity of plant species.

Despite the fact that much of the area has been reduced to a patchwork of clearings for cattle ranches and peasant communities, the Lacandon contains some of the most extensive and best preserved remnants of lower montane rainforest in Mexico and Central America. The best conserved area is within the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, which has about 290,000 hectares of the Reserve in good condition. The Lacandon is the best known of Mexico’s rainforest areas because of the attention it has received in the press and efforts by international organizations to protect what is left of it. The Lacandon is one of the most biodiverse rainforests in the world, with as much as 25% of Mexico’s total species diversity. The predominant native vegetation is perennial high rainforest with trees that can grow to an average height of thirty meters and often to fifty or sixty including Guatteria anomala, Ceiba pentandra, Swietenia macrophylla, Terminalia amazonia and Ulmus mexicana. Mammoth Guanacaste trees shrouded in vines and bromeliads among clear running streams, enormous firms, palms and wild elephant’s ear plants can still be seen. It has 1,500 tree species, 33% of all Mexican bird species, 25% of all Mexican animal species, 44% of all Mexican diurnal butterflies and 10% of all Mexico's fish species. The jungle contains many endangered species such as the red macaw, the eagle, the tapir, the spider monkey, the howler monkeys, and the swamp crocodile. It is one of the last jungles in North America big enough to support jaguars. Jaguars are also reported, though rare, in Selva Zoque.

Its size and biodiversity has designated it as a “biodiversity hotspot” by the Washington DC based environmental group Conservation International and under the Puebla-Panama Plan. It is part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which aims to link similar sites from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec down through Central America for conservation purposes. This is especially true for those “hotspots” located in remote trans-border tropical forests.

There are two major attractions within the Chiapas portion of this rainforest, the El Chiflón Waterfall and the Gruta de San Francisco cave. El Chiflón is located 53 km west of Comitán de Domínguez formed by the San Vicente Rivers. The water fall from a height of over seventy meters surrounded by steeply sloped hills. El Chiflón is preceded by two smaller falls called Suspiro and Ala del Angel, which are about six meters in height. A cascade after it is called the Velo de Novia. The Gruta de San Francisco is located in the La Trinitaria municipality near the community of Santa María. The cave has a number of chambers filled with stalactites and stalagmites with capricious shapes, formed by the dripping of water through the cavity. These caves were considered sacred in the pre Hispanic period as passages to the underworld. The cave is also home to millions of bat which emerge at night to feed in the surrounding jungle.