Reserva Cuxtal

The Reserva Cuxtal, officially the Zona Sujeta a Conservación Ecológica Reserva Cuxtal, is a protected area in the south of Mérida municipality, beginning at the southern edge of the city. Cuxtal means "life" in Maya. The Mérida city council declared it on 28 June 1993, making it the first natural protected area created by a municipality in Yucatán. It originally covered 10,757 hectares and was enlarged in December 2022 to about 11,895 hectares, mostly low deciduous forest. It is bordered by the city to the north, the comisarías of Yaxnic and Texán Cámara to the south, Kanasín municipality to the east, and San José Tzal and Ticimul to the west.

The reserve matters above all for water: the Mérida I water plant in its core zone extracts close to half of all the groundwater pumped for the municipality. Its best-preserved forest, about 4,900 hectares, forms the core zone, and the rest is divided into protection, restricted-use and buffer zones where farming, henequen, stone quarries and villages are allowed under rules. Surveys have recorded 474 plant species, including the endemic Coccothrinax readii palm and the Pterocereus gaumeri cactus; 161 bird species, among them the ocellated turkey and the Yucatán amazon; 61 reptiles; 13 amphibians; and 56 mammals, from bats and squirrels to the tamandua and the jaguarundi.

People live inside the reserve too, in the comisarías of Molas and Dzununcán and in old hacienda villages such as Xmatkuil, San Ignacio Tesip, San Pedro Chimay, Santa Cruz Palomeque, Hunxectamán, Tahdzibichén and San Nicolás Dzoyaxché, whose land includes the Dzonot-Ich cenote. The reserve also contains Maya archaeological sites, cenotes and the biology and agriculture campus of the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán. Since 2017 a municipal agency runs the reserve; in 2022 it opened Casa Cuxtal, an environmental education centre in Molas with courses, workshops and a videomapping room.