In Tepejillo, on one of the many hills in the southern Mexican municipality of San Juan Bautista Coixtlahuaca, extreme erosion has transformed the earth into bare rock, making it difficult to imagine that the area used to be home to a forest or, even more incredibly, a civilization.
“These forests supported a city of more than 100,000 residents before the arrival of the Spanish,” says mayor of the Mixteca Alta region, Oaxaca state, where Tepejillo is located.
The limestone landscape, once held enough water, animals, fertile soil and trees to support the powerful Mixtec ruler of Coixtlahuaca.
Around 20 years ago, the communities here decided to start restoring water and soil fertility. Their tenacity has yielded results: From out of the karst rocks appeared green shoots of vegetation, easily mistaken for glints of sunlight in the white desert. Only by coming closer are they recognizable as pines, oaks, breadnuts and junipers, all planted here in 2021.
“To plant them, first we had to dig ditches to hold the water. To do that, we had to break ground using machinery, because it was pure rock. Sometimes even the machines couldn’t do it,” says the mayor.
The idea that these fragile seedlings would recreate a forest out of such adverse conditions seemed preposterous. But then again, the Narreje and Loma Larga sites a few kilometers away, where communal work had started 20 years earlier, were showing good results. Dense masses of forest 5 meters (16 feet) high flank the highway connecting the cities of Puebla and Oaxaca.
At least 2,000 hectares (4,900 acres) of degraded land in the agrarian community of San Juan Bautista Coixtlahuaca have been reforested through communal efforts since 2000. That’s almost three times the size of Mexico City’s Chapultepec forest, one of the largest urban parks in the Americas.
Coixtlahuaca is just one of 25 communities that form part of this reforesting miracle stretching throughout what is known as the Chocho-Mixtecas Community Alliance. Within the alliance’s territory, more than 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres) have been restored, a feat equivalent to at least three Manhattans. It’s also proof of the potential for forest restoration when an entire population gets behind the idea of working with, not against, the land.
Restoration was so successful that on June 17, 2021, the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) and the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) selected it to be the venue for the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought.
Goats, everywhere
In Coixtlahuaca, like the rest of Oaxaca’s Mixteca region and other parts of Mexico, Spanish colonization led to intensive ranching that degraded every piece of land it touched. But unlike cattle or sheep, which can’t survive on poor vegetation, goats were able to feed on the plants of the degraded landscape, which are often the last barrier protecting the soil. With their strong teeth, goats can pull up plants from their roots, preventing them from regrowing. Their sharp hooves also cut into the topsoil, exposing it to erosion from rain and wind.
“Since the Spanish, this area has been full of goats, and that devastated it,” says the mayor.
Coixtlahuaca’s true environmental decline, then, started with the expansion of goat ranching and the resulting eradication of the area’s vegetation.
Most people here are aware of the consequences of overgrazing and even participating in reforestation efforts,” continues the mayor.
Starting at less than zero
Coixtlahuaca and the rest of Mixteca entered the 20th century with an eroded territory.
“But now, thanks to this work, the communities once again have water, crops, business and opportunities to prosper" states one person from the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) in Oaxaca.
Coixtlahuaca and other Mixteca communities didn’t have anything to take care of. There wasn’t any vegetation to restore. Instead, they had to start with the basics: crushing stones to retain moisture, and look for plants that would be strategic for regenerating the soil. The idea was to achieve something between water, soil and plants that had previously taken millions of years. “Here, we aren’t starting from zero but rather from less than zero,” says the mayor.
A forest technician who has worked in the region for more than a decade, says the focus should be on the soil more than the trees. “Normally, there is more attention given to areas with trees and where forests are exploited. Only now are the government and other entities understanding that we aren’t reforesting but rather restoring.
“Based on this work,” she adds, “I fervently believe that restoration, even in the worst of cases, is possible.”
The communities have also planted significant amounts of other species that are endemic: the smooth-bark Mexican pine (Pinus pseudostrobus). In general, the pines are fundamental as pioneering species for rapid growth and adaption to difficult conditions. This is most evident, for example, after a forest fire, as the pines are the first to grow, becoming an outpost that allows other species to develop alongside them.
If at first the goals for reforestation in the area were 10 or 20 hectares (24 or 49 acres) a year, now they’re 200 or 300 hectares (490 or 740 acres). The restoration work lasts nearly all year and starts in the dry season with the preparation of ditches and trenches, and carefully calculating the runoff.
Between July and October, during the rainy season starts, reforestation work becomes a kind of popular festival in which everyone in the community is invited to help. Everyone gets two meals a day, and the adults dig while the children take turns racing to bring the plants for potting.
In Suchixtlahuaca, a small village next to Coixtlahuaca, residents have managed to reforest around 800 hectares (nearly 2,000 acres) in the past two decades, an area twice as large as New York City’s Central Park. And the goals keep growing every year.
“We’re ambitious because here the need is big and we have the hands of everyone in the community,” says one resident.
While the community members decide what they want to do next — hindered by restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevent them from holding meetings in person — the wildlife have caught on to the initiative. Squirrels, weasels, woodpeckers, snakes and bats are starting to return to the restored areas.
The increase in the coyote population has especially excited residents because, they eat juniper seeds that are later spread throughout the territory — a natural reforestation mechanism.
“We are restoring,” says one person, “because we know that it would be difficult to restore left on its own. But that doesn’t mean this stops with our intervention. Nature itself will follow. We just have to give her a push.”