In western Mexico, a forest was cleared in a couple of days. It was the early morning of a spring day in 2020. A dozen workers arrived in two trucks escorted by armed men aboard a van. Minutes after their arrival, the high-pitched shriek of chainsaws scared the birds into flight through the canopy of […]
As avocado production stifles biodiversity, depletes water reserves and takes over once-forested land, farmers and environmentalists in Jalisco warn that Mexico’s “green gold” may not be so green after all.
For several weeks in 2015, the sound of chainsaws cutting down trees was incessant in the Angangueo municipality in the Mexican state of Michoacán. When a group of people tried to stop the deforestation, it was already too late: 10 hectares (25 acres) of forest had already been destroyed on hillsides in the central area […]