CRUCE A LA COLORADA, Guatemala — It’s mid-May and Luis Antonio Juarez, also known as Tonito, has just received a phone alert about a wildfire in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. In his community, Tonito is the resident in charge of monitoring wildlife activities. The area affected by the fire is also home to jaguars in the reserve, so he quickly launches a drone to check the situation from above. As the drone takes flight from the entrance of the community, turkeys gobble loudly and a little boy fires a plastic gun into the air.

Tonito lives in Cruce a la Colorada, a community of 115 families located in the central part of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, in northern Guatemala, on the border with Mexico and Belize. Here, the jaguar (Panthera onca) is an icon and an umbrella species: protecting it safeguards many others within the same habitat. But jaguars face numerous threats, including extensive illegal ranching that clears forests and leads to wildfires. To protect the feline’s habitat, the local community works tirelessly, patrolling the forests every day, monitoring the flora and fauna, and tracking wildfires.

The Cruce a la Colorada Integral Forestry Association (AFICC), along with the 12 other forest community concessions in the reserve, have long-term contracts with Guatemala’s National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP) to protect the Maya Biosphere Reserve and its fauna. “The forest management carried out by community members who live and depend on the forest has been fundamental to maintaining the integrity of the reserve,” says Gabriela Ponce, Guatemala country director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which monitors the jaguar’s population in collaboration with local communities, partner institutions and CONAP.

According to WCS calculations, there are 76 jaguars in the 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) occupied by the 13 community concessions within the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

After a first aerial inspection with the drone, Tonito and six members of the local fire commission drive to the burning area. Their equipment consists of backpacks, a water pump, blower, chainsaw and machetes. The fire appears to have burned only a small pasture. The prompt intervention by the community ensures it’s snuffed out before it reaches the lagoon known as El Aguacate.

“We work with phone alerts, drones, but also with programmed agricultural burnings and firebreak inspections, carried out when permitted by the early-warning system of red, yellow or green flags we display at the community entrance,” Josué Lopez Gutierrez, the community fire coordinator, tells Mongabay.

Different management, different results

Spanning more than 2.2 million hectares (5.3 million acres), or an area the size of neighboring Belize, the Maya Biosphere Reserve is divided in three section: the core, about 36% of the total area, is directly managed by state and located close to the Mexican border; a multiple-use zone, 40% of the reserve, is partially managed by the forest community concessions; and a buffer zone to the south is managed by the municipalities. Jaguars occur throughout the reserve, but experts and residents say that conflicts with people occur only in the buffer zone — where ranching is allowed — when livestock get lost.

About 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the Maya ceremonial center of Tikal, Cruce a la Colorada lies in the center of the Maya Biosphere Reserve. In 2000, CONAP granted the community a 25-year concession to sustainably manage the area; this was renewed in 2023.

Under the concession, communities can sustainably harvest forest resources over small areas. They use the earnings to pay for drones to track wildfires, camera traps to monitor wildlife in restoration areas, and phone apps to detect species. They also finance three nurseries for native tree saplings, which they then plant on former pastures to restore the soil. They receive support and training from the Association of Forestry Communities of Petén (ACOFOP), and CONAP monitors their activities.

“A decade ago, we trained young people from 13 community concessions, such as Cruce a la Colorada, to use drones, satellite data analysis, camera traps and biological monitoring,” says José Barrientos, ACOFOP’s biodiversity monitoring assistant. “Technologies allow us to manage forests in the best way and empower communities. Today, the residents are working as experts and training more local people, due also to the internet coverage recently achieved with satellite dishes.”

“The presence and vigilance of the communities have made it possible to preserve the population of jaguars, their habitat, their prey, and water sources, while on the border with Mexico they are under great threats from illegal trafficking,” says Kurt Duchez, director of programs at WCS.

On the Mexican border, jaguars are under threat in communities such as Laguna del Tigre and Sierra del Lacandon, which are plagued by criminal activities such as drug trafficking, illegal ranching and hunting, timber and wildlife trafficking, and illegal encroachments to build new villages.

Although there’s no clear data on the number of jaguars illegally traded in Guatemala, a regional study from 2019 indicates that up to 50 jaguars per year could be trafficked across the Maya Forest Corridor, which also includes Belize and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Jaguars are most commonly sought for their fangs, claws, skins and skulls; their trade has become increasingly linked to organized criminal networks involved in drug trafficking and illegal livestock farming.

Monitoring ecosystems

Tonito, 39, has spent his life close to this tropical jungle. He regularly patrols the forest and monitors flora and fauna, accompanied by his son Walter, now 7, and colleagues Irineo Salvatierra, Audias Suchite and David Alonzo. “This forest holds many secrets,” says Salvatierra, 70, while drinking water from a liana branch freshly cut with a machete. On the edge of the forest, next to a small lagoon known as La Gloria, they spot jaguar tracks.

Walter runs a few meters away from his father to check for more footprints. Many animals come to drink at this small shore, hidden by tall trees such as Maya nut (Brosimum alicastrum), bamboo palm (Chamaedorea oblongata), prairie acacia (Acacia angustissima), copal (Protium copal) and big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla).

“Animal tracks are difficult to identify in the arid soil of late dry summer,” Juarez says, photographing the jaguar paw prints with his phone and uploading them to the iNaturalist app. Only a few months earlier, he says, he saw from a jaguar from afar, drinking from the same lagoon.

Barrientos, from the local forestry community association, travels weekly between communities to help them with wildlife monitoring. This also fuels his passion for bird-watching, he tells Mongabay, while showing photos of a pygmy kingfisher (Chloroceryle aenea) and a northern jacana bird (Jacana spinosa) that he spotted during the two-hour monitoring trip with Tonito and the crew.

“Forests and their inhabitants are a treasure for the concession’s residents,” says Julio Valle, 57, ACOFOP’s technical assistant for forest fire monitoring, who has spent his entire career in conservation. “Local communities are aware: if they lose the forest, they’ll lose everything. Jaguars are the most emblematic symbols people proudly want to preserve.”

Conservation can pay off

The patrolling and monitoring jobs are funded by small-scale harvesting of timber and other forest resources, a practice strictly regulated by CONAP. To maximize income, the timber is certified sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council, which allows it to be sold at a premium to foreign customers, including to U.S. guitar makers, or for use in artisanal furniture.

“The community makes annual plans of forestry utilization. Harvesting a small number of the trees allows for long-term conservation and generates jobs for locals who love their forest,” Barrientos tells Mongabay. “One tree per hectare is cut, practically one out of 30. Only approved species, more than 25 years old and over a certain diameter [are harvested]. Also, they commit to replanting the same number of trees.”

In 2024, the Cruce a la Colorada community planted 22,822 young trees, with plans to plant another 38,000 this year. To date, the community has restored 208 hectares (515 acres) with mahogany, cedar and Maya nut trees planted in an agroforestry system. The goal is to restore and maintain a total of  704 hectares (1,740 acres) of community land, Barrientos says.

In reforested areas, they installed nine camera traps to verify wildlife presence. Jaguars are omnipresent in the images: sharpening their claws on trees, or hunting foxes or the pheasant-like chachalaca bird.

“Community governance has been an active factor in conservation, and we at CONAP support it,” Daavid Contreras, CONAP’s professional adviser on forest management, tells Mongabay. “In forest concessions, deforestation, illegal logging and fires have been virtually eliminated thanks to community governance.”

The community’s efforts to preserve jaguars’ ecosystems were the subject of a 2024 study. Researchers identified how, in countries with limited state resources and powerful criminal organizations, community and Indigenous organizations are often more effective than the state at managing protected areas, preventing deforestation and conserving biodiversity.

”Deforestation rates are lower — close to 0%  — and jaguar population densities are higher in community and industrial forest concessions,” says Jennifer A. Devine, a political ecologist at Texas State University and co-author of the study. “The clue is in the community’s management. It is crucial to empower local communities: good for the environment, good to deter illegal activities.”

Protecting the forest comes with risk

“Like many other organizations, we were born some years after the peace agreements in 1996, before it was prohibited,” says Felisa Navas, 54, president of AFICC, Cruce a la Colorada’s forestry association. She advocates for greater female involvement in conservation, noting that “60% of the women of Cruce a la Colorada are not involved … my goal will be to give more talks to encourage them.”

Navas has been in charge since the mysterious death of community leader David Salguero,  who oversaw control and surveillance in 2010, when land invasions for new settlements threatened the community. “The monitoring project was at the beginning, and it was a dangerous moment,” says Estuardo Miguel Julian, treasurer of the association and Salguero’s friend. ”It was the most unsafe time, the whole community board was threatened by the people involved in illegal settlements.”

Despite past dangers, today most of the community works as part of an enthusiastic group of nature lovers. “There is a positive effect of well-managed concessions in the heart of Maya [Biosphere] Reserve,” says Manolo Garcia, a zoologist at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala’s (USAC) Conservation Data Center, who has studied the jaguar population in the reserve. “We still lack a little research on it, but these areas mitigate the effects of threats, such as fires that come from the border areas.”

The conservation project looks far into the future. AFICC plans to expand its activities with bird-watching and ecotourism initiatives, increasing the community women’s participation, and exploring new markets, such as selling beer and cookies made from Maya nuts. But new funds are crucial to developing these future activities.

“USAID cutbacks affected us in the restoration area and we are looking for new donors to work more for flagship species, such as jaguars,” says Valle from ACOFOP. “Once our forest restoration will be finished, we hope to see jaguars returning everywhere.”

Citations:

Polisar, J., Davies, C., Morcatty, T., Da Silva, M., Zhang, S., Duchez, K., … Reuter, A. (2023). Multi-lingual multi-platform investigations of online trade in jaguar parts. PLOS ONE, 18(1), e0280039. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0280039

Magliocca, N. R., Carter, N. H., Devine, J. A., Nielsen, E. A., & Sesnie, S. E. (2024). Jaguar conservation is caught in the crossfire of America’s ‘War on Drugs’. Biological Conservation, 296, 110687. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110687

Gaitán, C. A., González-Castillo, V. R., Guzmán-Flores, G. D., González-Xiloj, P. A., Bá, U. T., García-Anleu, R. A., & García, M. J. (2022). Resident jaguars (Panthera onca) at the heart of the Maya Forest in Guatemala. Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad, 93, e934073. doi:10.22201/ib.20078706e.2022.93.4073

Banner image: An aerial image taken with a drone shows one of the restored areas in the forest surrounding the Cruce la Colorada community. Image courtesy of Unidad de Monitoreo Comunitario – ACOFOP.

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