Impact of the Wildlife Management Units Policy on the Conservation of Species and Ecosystems of Southeastern Mexico

Abstract

Wildlife in Latin America is subject to enormous pressures and, as in most countries, has been negatively impacted in Mexico. In 1997, the Mexican government implemented a policy of conservation and sustainable use of wildlife units (called UMAs, by their Spanish acronym) that comprises intensive and free-living management. Since then, no national or regional assessments have been conducted to estimate impacts and benefits even with 5529 registered UMAs now covering almost 20% of the national territory. The objective of this study was to characterize the SUMA (UMAs System) in a regional context in three states of southeastern Mexico. The impact of UMAs was studied in depth through a selection of representative case studies: three species of mangrove (Avicennia germinans, Laguncularia racemosa and Rhizophora mangle), ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata), red cedar (Cedrela odorata) and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), and a connectivity analysis, in order to evaluate the contribution of the UMAs to the conservation of species and ecosystems. The number of active UMAs at regional scale was 834, managing 273 species; 7.1% of the UMAs manage nationally-prioritized species, while 8.3% and 94.3% manage endemic and native species, respectively. Conservation of ecosystems has been successfully achieved through the UMAs that manage mangrove and white-tailed deer. We propose to promote the establishment of free-living UMAs that would contribute to increase the conservation areas. Finally, we highlight the relevance of regional-scale spatial analysis as an important tool for improving environmental policy and conservation strategies.

Biogeographic analysis of population density of white-tailed deer in Mexico: Importance of the Protected Natural Areas and Wildlife Management Units

“…Population density and biomass could vary depending on climatic factors such as the rain pattern and temperature (Mandujano and Naranjo 2010;Yáñez-Arenas et al 2012a), ecological variables such as vegetation type, topographic features, and human factors such as habitat transformation, presence of livestock and illegal hunting (López-Téllez et al 2007;Coronel-Arellano et al 2008;Ramos-Robles et al 2013). The densities of this species are between 5 and 17 deer/km 2 in the United States (Adams and Hamilton 2011). The differences between countries could be the result of different habitat-carrying capacity (K) and management politics which affect the local population dynamics (DeYoung 2011).…”

Gestión adaptativa en sistemas socioecológicos: Un estudio de caso de las palmas camedor (Chamaedorea quezalteca) en la Reserva de la Biosfera La Sepultura, Chiapas, México

“…Este esquema gubernamental inició en 1997, como una forma de regular el aprovechamiento de la flora y fauna silvestres con alguna categoría de riesgo, avalado por la Ley General de la Vida Silvestre. Las UMA se han considerado un instrumento que promueve la conservación a través del comanejo de recursos por parte de grupos usuarios, a través del registro oficial de sus predios para desarrollar proyectos sustentables (Álvarez-Peredo et al, 2018;Pineda-Vázquez et al, 2019).…”

Sorta Situ, Renaturalización y Una Salud: Tres conceptos de urgente integración en la conservación en México

“…La superficie total que abarcan las ANP llega al 11% del territorio nacional (CONANP, 2020), si a esto le sumamos el 0.2% correspondiente de las ADVC (CONANP, 2019) y el 20% de las UMA (Álvarez-Peredo et al, 2018) pudiera integrarse un sistema de reservas archipiélago a escala nacional. No obstante, muchas de estas áreas naturales requerirán corredores biológicos para fomentar su conectividad y conductancia (Albert et al, 2017).…”