Community Conservation of Monarch Forest in Mexico

With the overwintering colonies already established, Alternare has begun planning for the coming year. Looking back at the past year, Alternare’s team proudly reported having held 79 workshops with 649 people from the indigenous communities of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve! During the last four months of the year, they held four workshops where 70 people were trained to build four rainwater capturing cisterns that will benefit 70 families. One of the men from Nicolás Romero Indigenous Community told us, "I was not expecting the cisterns to be so cheap! I'll be able to share what I learned with other people so they can build them in their communities too."

An additional workshop to construct a fuel-efficient stove that will benefit six families was also conducted.

More workshops are planned for 2022 including topics such as forest tree production, reforestation techniques, and construction of more rainwater capturing cisterns.

With your support, MBF is looking forward to supporting Alternare in another successful year of activities that benefit local communities while conserving and restoring the overwintering habitat for the monarchs. THANK YOU!!

With MBF’s support, Alternare, along with ten local communities planted 22,515 trees on 21.52 hectares in 26 areas within the buffer zone of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve! Pine, oak, birch, and ash seedlings were extracted from 16 school nurseries, three community nurseries and one located in Alternare’s training center.

The president of the Community’s Forest Committee, Fidencio Guzmán Colín said, “Alternare has a skilled engineer who provides us with good information so that we can have a healthy forest in the future, while at the same time, benefit our community. All the decisions are made in agreement with the community in assemblies where we also offer employment opportunities that don’t harm the forest and give people the option to provide for their families”.

Additionally,from May through August, two workshops were held in two indigenous communities where seven women and 11 men participated resulting in the construction of three cisterns to capture rain- water,

Another successful reforestation summer thanks to YOU!!! Without your support none of this would be possible. MBF, Alternare and the communities say MUCHAS GRACIAS!!!