Every winter, northwest of Mexico City, the branches of the Oyamel fir trees ignite in orange, colored by the wings of monarch butterflies that have made the epic journey south from Canada and the United States.

The forest is home to the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, created by presidential decree in 1986 and designated as a Unesco World Heritage site in 2008. The reserve shelters nearly 90 percent of the region’s over-wintering monarch butterfly population.

Despite the fact that the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is internationally protected, decades of degradation of the forest have posed an existential threat to this fragile ecosystem. Over the past four decades, the number of winter roosting sites for the butterflies in the reserve has fallen by over 50 percent, driven in part by illegal logging.

After researchers found that 10 percent of total canopy cover had been lost between 2001 and 2012, the Mexican government ramped up enforcement of laws prohibiting logging. Government raids on illegal sawmills in the reserve sharply reduced logging. Yet according to an analysis by the World Wildlife Fund, the rate of forest degradation in the reserve tripled in 2022.

To protect these forests — one of the few remaining wintering refuges for migrating monarchs — the local Mazahua Indigenous community in Crescencio Morales has established its own security force.

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