In the Mexican port city of Acapulco, in southwestern Guerrero state, human activities have put so much pressure on the most important lagoons that the mangrove areas in this city have been severely damaged by urbanization and made more vulnerable to damage from hurricanes. Some mangroves are even on the path to disappearing, according to a 2024 study published in the journal Comunicación Científica.

The study analyzed the various impacts that have brought the main lagoons in Acapulco to a critical state beyond the damage left by Hurricane Otis in 2023, which was the strongest to make landfall in the Mexican Pacific in 40 years.

The study found the mangroves of Laguna Negra in Puerto Marqués, Acapulco, diminished by about 60% between 1970 and 2020. After Hurricane Otis, the mangrove areas almost completely disappeared, according to the study. Satellite data from Global Forest Watch suggest mangrove loss continued in 2024.

The study’s results indicate the disappearance of the Laguna Negra mangrove is due to population growth and the expansion of agriculture.

Farther south, Laguna Tres Palos is the largest lagoon in Acapulco. Although the impact of hurricanes on the lagoon has been comparatively minor, it still lost 30% of its mangrove areas between 1970 and 2020 due primarily to agricultural expansion, according to the study.

Study co-author Benjamín Castillo Elías, who specializes in the management and conservation of mangroves, told Mongabay Latam that Acapulco’s mangrove loss is largely due to human activity.

“Not everything was due to Otis,” Castillo Elías said. “There is continuous anthropogenic pressure. There is filling, silting and mangrove logging. All this human activity has been changing and damaging the area.”

Marina Robles García, deputy secretary of environmental policy at SEMARNAT, Mexico’s environment ministry, put the blame on tourists.

“Ever since the increase in tourism, the effects on all the coastal ecosystems have been brutal,” Robles García said. “The vulnerable condition of Acapulco has several causes, some associated with the destruction of these defense zones on the coast, but also the destruction of the mountain that was specifically evident in the most recent hurricanes,” she added, referring to landslides caused by Hurricane John in 2024.

Overall, the state of Guerrero has lost 52% of its mangroves since 1979, according to the most recent official monitoring work conducted by CONABIO, the federal government’s biodiversity commission.

Castillo Elías and his co-authors found the loss of Acapulco’s mangroves is already having an effect on the area’s ecotourism, with some mangrove tour operators left without work. They also caution that the loss of mangroves is likely also affecting coastal wildlife, such as American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus).

Mangroves act as nurseries and refuges for many species of fish, and research indicates their loss can have devastating effects on fisheries. At Laguna Tres Palos, the impacts of mangrove loss have been felt by local fishing cooperatives, according to Castillo Elías.

In this area, the most heavily affected mangrove species is the black mangrove (Avicennia germinans), Castillo Elías said. Scientists from the Autonomous University of Guerrero and residents are working to recover the natural area by carrying out restoration activities in the lagoon.

“The people are the ones who need us, as academics, to intervene with them, accompany them and try to find solutions, because they require and depend upon this natural resource in a direct and indirect way,” Castillo Elías said. He warned of a trend toward polluting and silting (the accumulation of environment-modifying sediments) in lagoons, despite taking steps toward public awareness.

“We do see indicators of pollution [and] of the eutrophication [the buildup of nutrients in the water, which can lead to oxygen depletion and other issues] of the lagoons — a series of problems that have been constant — and this continues, even though actions have been taken to raise awareness,” Castillo Elías said.

In addition to providing habitat for commercially important fish species, mangroves benefit human communities by sequestering carbon and buffering coastal areas from storms and swells.

“The people themselves were able to confirm for us that if it weren’t for the mangroves of more than 30 meters [100 feet] that were in Laguna Negra, they would have been pelted by Otis,” Castillo Elías said. “The first barrier that [the hurricane] hit was the mangroves, and it damaged them, but if there had not been mangrove cover, it would have been catastrophic in the urban part of Laguna Negra.”

But while hurricane damage to Acapulco’s urban areas may not have been catastrophic, damage did occur. Research conducted by the U.S.-based Scripps Institution of Oceanography and published in 2024 in the journal Science of The Total Environment suggests that if the region’s mangroves had been maintained at 1981 levels, much of the destruction left by Hurricane Otis in 2023 would have been avoided.

The study estimates that as mangroves are fragmented and the distance between them increases, the damage to infrastructure after a hurricane increases by 2% for each additional kilometer (0.6 miles) away from a mangrove.

“Additionally, if the nearest mangrove had been 3 km [1.9 mi] farther away, one additional house would likely have been destroyed,” the study states.

Last January, Mexico announced its support for the Mangrove Breakthrough initiative after an invitation from the international nonprofit Global Mangrove Alliance (GMA). The initiative’s aim is to guide actions for conservation and restoration of mangroves.

To determine which sites should be prioritized, environmental authorities called on communities, organizations and academics. Although the 300 selected sites have yet to be revealed, Mexico’s environment minister, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, said that attention will be focused on mangroves in the states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Campeche and Tabasco, as well as in Acapulco, due to the impacts of hurricanes Otis and John.

“Based on the analyses of the conditions surrounding mangrove health, we went to show information to civil society organizations, to academics [and] to environmental authorities so that they would give us more detail about what was being experienced in the territory,” said Robles García, the ministry’s deputy secretary for policy. “In fact, the world’s mangroves have been disappearing in a very large way, and Mexico has not been an exception.”

Robles García added that Mexico has enacted a national program for mangrove restoration and that work will begin this year. She said the program aims to actively restore at least 30% of the country’s mangroves by 2030.

Pilar Jacobo, subdirector of conservation at WWF Mexico and coordinator of the Mexican chapter of the Mangrove Breakthrough initiative, said the program will begin rolling out in March and April, and will be a joint effort between coastal communities and mangrove specialists.

“There is no way to be able to restore [mangroves] without the participation of communities, because in every corner, in every bay, on every coast where restoration is necessary, those who do so are the fishing cooperatives or groups of women. In Mexico, they are the main participants in restoration,” Jacobo said.

Castillo Elías is also involved in the Mangrove Breakthrough initiative. He agreed that local involvement is a crucial component of mangrove restoration.

“We identified sites that need to be restored [and] be declared protected areas for the state of Guerrero, mostly in the mangrove area,” he said. “What is important is that there is a connection between all the participants and that rural communities are integrated.”

Banner image: Damaged mangroves at Laguna Negra in Puerto Marqués in Acapulco, in Mexico’s state of Guerrero. Image by Benjamín Castillo Elías.

This story was first published here in Spanish on March 14, 2025.

Feedback:Use this form to send a message to the editor of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.

Citations:

Gervacio Jiménez, H., Castillo Elías, B., & Villerías Salinas, S. (2024). Huracán Otis en Acapulco, Guerrero: Vulnerabilidad socioeconómica y ambiental ante los impactos del fenómeno hidrometeorológico. Comunicación Científica. doi:10.52501/cc.205

Yamamoto, Y. (2023). Living under ecosystem degradation: Evidence from the mangrove–fishery linkage in Indonesia. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 118, 102788. doi:10.1016/j.jeem.2023.102788

Bastien-Olvera, B. A., Rivera, A., Gray, E., Mitchell, S., Favoretto, F., Ezcurra, E., & Aburto-Oropeza, O. (2024). Mangrove preservation could have significantly reduced damages from Hurricane Otis on the coast of Guerrero, Mexico. Science of The Total Environment, 957, 177822.  doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.177822