Downgrading of Mexican Park Raises Suspicions About Development Plans Tim Johnson - McClatchyDC
go to original November 24, 2013

A hiker wends down a slope into the crater of Nevado de Toluca volcano in Mexico, July 7, 2012. (Tim Johnson/MCT)

NEVADO DE TOLUCA, Mexico — Nearly eight decades ago, President Lazaro Cardenas waxed eloquent when he created the Nevado de Toluca National Park, hailing Mexico’s fourth highest volcano as a “true living museum of flora and fauna.”

The iconic national park lasted 77 years. Then, last month, President Enrique Pena Nieto decreed it out of existence. Nevado de Toluca is now considered a “protected area.”

Conservation officials say they had little choice. Logging and other degradation within the 208-square-mile park had become so severe that the national park designation made no sense.

Some environmental activists are livid about the change of status.

“This is an abdication by the Mexican state of maintaining the kinds of national parks that civilized countries of the world enjoy,” said Gabriel Quadri de la Torre, an environmentalist and presidential candidate in the 2012 elections. “This is a defeat... It’s terrible.”

Unlike national parks in many other countries, much of Mexico’s protected lands and wildlife refuges are in private or communal hands and people live in them. They plant crops, raise cattle, farm trout and occasionally hew trees for lumber.

... Some critics of the downgrading of Nevado de Toluca’s status suspect that politicians still harbor development plans.

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