Reserva de la Biosfera La Michilía

In southeastern Durango, where the Sierra Madre Occidental breaks up into smaller ranges, the Sierra de Michis and the Sierra Urica enclose a valley of rolling hills, mesas and ravines. This is La Michilía, one of Mexico's first biosphere reserves. UNESCO added it to its Man and the Biosphere program in 1977; the federal government created the reserve in 1979 to protect about 35,000 hectares of dry temperate forest, and it became a national biosphere reserve in 2000. It is managed by CONANP, the national protected areas commission, and lies in the municipalities of Súchil and Mezquital, with villages such as Ejido San Juan de Michis and Ejido Alemán in its buffer zone. The core zone is Cerro Blanco. In late 2024 Semarnat presented the reserve's management plan and an advisory council was sworn in, and the scientists who pushed for its creation, among them Gonzalo Halffter and Jerzy Rzedowski, were honored along with former governor Héctor Mayagoitia.

The forest shifts with elevation, mostly between 2,000 and 3,000 meters. Above about 2,700 meters pines dominate, with stands of Douglas-fir, cypress and juniper; lower down pine and oak mix, and the lowest ground holds open oak woodland and grassland, manzanita scrub and wet meadows where the streams gather. Botanists have counted some 770 species of vascular plants. The Laurel and Temascal rivers and a number of creeks run through the reserve, and its forests feed two watersheds that the region's farms depend on.

The wildlife has North American roots: Coues white-tailed deer, puma, coyote, pronghorn, wild turkey, golden eagle and thick-billed parrot, along with woodpeckers and nuthatches. The imperial woodpecker, the largest in the world, lived here and is now considered extinct. Mexican gray wolves and black bears had vanished from these mountains and have been reintroduced, and the reserve has a captive breeding center for Mexican wolves and deer. The Institute of Ecology (INECOL) runs its Piedra Herrada field station here, and studies here have looked at Coues deer, coyote movements and the howling of Mexican wolves. It is a research reserve more than a tourist park: there are no formal campgrounds or services, travel inside is on foot along dirt tracks, and hiring a guide in one of the edge villages is the sensible way in.