Reserva de la Biosfera Chamela-Cuixmala

The Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve protects 13,142 hectares of tropical dry forest on Jalisco's southern coast, in La Huerta municipality, about 120 km north of Manzanillo. Its natural boundaries are the Chamela creek and Chamela Bay on one side and the Cuitzmala River, one of the main rivers of the Jalisco coast, on the other. Federal Highway 200, from Melaque to Puerto Vallarta, cuts it in two. The land is rolling hills and alluvial plains, and besides the dry forest there are patches of semi-evergreen forest, mangroves, riverside woodland, reed beds and scrub.

The dry forest changes completely with the seasons: most rain falls from July to October, 750 to 780 mm a year, and from November to June the deciduous forest, as its name says, sheds its leaves. The average temperature is around 25 °C. More than 1,800 species of plants and animals have been recorded here: about 1,200 plants, 270 birds, around 70 mammals, over 60 reptiles, some twenty amphibians and more than 2,200 insects. A third of the mammals and half of the reptiles and amphibians are endemic to Mexico. Jaguar, puma, ocelot, jaguarundi, white-tailed deer, peccary, coati, American crocodile and the military macaw live here, four species of sea turtle nest on its beaches, and many migratory birds arrive in winter.

The reserve began in 1971, when UNAM's Institute of Biology opened the Chamela Biological Station on a donated 1,600-hectare tract. From the late 1970s the British financier James Goldsmith bought about 9,700 hectares to conserve, and in 1988 he set up the Cuixmala Ecological Foundation. The reserve was decreed on 30 December 1993, joined UNESCO's network of biosphere reserves in 2006 and is also a Ramsar wetland. More than 70% of the land is private; the rest belongs to UNAM, the University of Guadalajara, small owners and the Rincón de Ixtán ejido, and nobody lives inside. Illegal logging, poaching and tourism developments along its edges are the main threats, and Hurricanes Jova in 2011 and Patricia in 2015 damaged parts of the forest.