Laguna de Hueyapan

Laguna de Hueyapan is a wetland, not a settlement: a permanent freshwater spring and its small pool, ringed by dry tropical forest on volcanic rock, in the municipality of Jiutepec, south-east of Cuernavaca. It lies at about 1,377 m and is part of El Texcal, an ecological conservation zone decreed on 6 May 1992 and raised to state park on 17 February 2010. On 2 February of that same year it was designated Ramsar site no. 1933, covering 276 hectares.

Its value is mostly about water. El Texcal sits on old lava flows of fractured basalt, which lets rain soak straight in; the Ramsar record calls it the main recharge area for Morelos's aquifers, and the lagoon supplies drinking water to some 13 nearby neighbourhoods. The wildlife it lists includes the dusky hummingbird (Cynanthus sordidus), the fish Notropis boucardi and several frogs; the park also has white-tailed deer, opossums, ringtails, roadrunners, chachalacas and black iguanas, plus the endemic tree Esenbeckia vazquezii.

The pressures are plain: Cuernavaca's urban and industrial sprawl wraps part of the site, and the Ramsar record cites illegal settlements, water extraction, the taking of plants and animals, and introduced rainbow trout. In September 2024 Jiutepec's civil protection office warned the lagoon might overflow after heavy rain, putting San Francisco Texcalpan, Hacienda de las Flores and Cuauchiles at risk. It is a place for walking and birdwatching, not for swimming.