Mexico has lost 93,091 hectares of primary forest in 2024, enters top 10 countries with highest forest loss; fires caused 60% of damage with over 8,000 incidents: Global Forest Watch

June 19, 2025 (CE Noticias Financieras) –

Mexico experienced one of the most critical years for forest damage in 2024, with 93,091 hectares of primary forest ecosystems affected, almost double the amount recorded in 2023. This meant that it entered the list of the 10 countries with the highest number of primary forests affected in the world, according to a global report by the GLAD Laboratory of the University of Maryland and Global Forest Watch (GFW) of the World Resources Institute (WRI), released in May.

The study identified that fires were responsible for 60 percent of vegetation cover losses in Mexico. In 2024 there were more than 8,000 across the country. The National Forestry Commission (Conafor) states that 1,672,215 hectares were affected and that this is one of the highest records in terms of area burned. Data from this agency, which is the main body responsible for the development, protection, conservation and restoration of forests in Mexico, indicate that the cause of most of the fires (29.8 percent) is unknown. It is estimated that 23.4 percent of them were intentional; 17.83 percent were due to agricultural activities and 13 percent due to livestock. Only 1.34 percent of the fires were natural.

Although fires were the main factor, the climate crisis, reflected in a years-long drought in much of the country, as well as deforestation in states that have been red hot spots for decades are also part of the forest damage. These causes, according to the authors of the report and the specialists consulted, were not exclusive to Mexico, but were manifested throughout the planet during 2024. Globally, the damage occurred in 6.7 million hectares of primary tropical forest. The international report does not identify natural and arson fires, nor does it measure their impact on ecosystems, so it is important to point out that not all the areas affected by fire meant a loss of forests for the country.

This is pointed out by José Iván Zúñiga, WRI Mexico’s Forestry Manager, who explains that most of Mexico’s temperate forests are fire-adapted, which means that one day they will catch fire. Of the 65.7 million hectares of forests and jungles in Mexico, the specialist points out that nearly half are temperate, mainly pine and oak. “What is burned is not necessarily a loss of forest, much less deforestation. These ecosystems are going to be affected by fire at some point,” says Zúñiga, who mentions that the effects of climate change do expose these ecosystems more by drying out the soil and the lower parts of the trees.

In fact, 66 percent of the forest area impacted by fire in 2024 was in adapted ecosystems that do not suffer significant damage from fires, and that fire is even necessary for their regeneration, according to Conafor. “For large trees, especially in temperate ecosystems, it even serves them because it cleans their bark, fattens them and helps them avoid pests and diseases,” says Zúñiga. According to Conafor, 58 percent of the forest hectares impacted by fires in 2024 were of “minimal impact”, which mainly burned leaf litter.

You can read: Mexico’s oldest ecovillage: how it was born and what makes it unique since 1982

Although Mexico has registered in recent years an increase in forest hectares impacted by fire, 95 percent of the fires that occurred between 2019 and 2024 were “superficial”, of which 90 percent had minimal impact, as the burned surface is fire-adapted, according to the commission. Mongabay Latam sought Conafor for more information to explain the impacts of fires in 2024, but as of the publication of this article there was no response.

For WRI Mexico’s forestry researcher, the effects of climate change combined with Mexico’s fire-adapted forest ecosystems are a possible explanation for the increase in areas impacted in 2024. “The seven-year drought period we had is stronger in the central-northern part of the country, where there are more temperate forests, which are also adapted to fire and which result in this,” says Zúñiga. However, he also points out that fire patterns and forest conditions in Mexico are changing, as in the rest of the world, which merits greater attention from the authorities for the protection of ecosystems.

As an example of these changes in fire patterns, the expert mentions the cases of large fires in Chile, Canada, the United States, Portugal, Greece, Bolivia and Brazil, where the flames reached new areas. Enrique Jardel, a specialist in ecology and fire management, also agrees that climate change, but mainly human activities transform the landscape. “Many fires in some places have been caused by changes in land use for commercial crops, be it avocados or other things. And the advance of cattle ranching continues,” he told Mongabay Latam in an interview in April.

In 22 years, about 4.7 million hectares have been deforested in Mexico, mainly for pasture and agricultural use, according to environmental authorities. Among the types of deforested areas in Mexico, the rainforest is the most affected, with 45 percent of the deforestation registered between 2001 and 2023. Precisely in the Yucatan Peninsula, one of the regions where this ecosystem is most abundant, large forest losses are also detected.

WRI’s global report states that half of Mexico’s primary forest loss in 2024 occurred in Campeche and Quintana Roo, two states on the peninsula where intensive monoculture systems have increased. “There are very clear deforestation hotspots in the country. In the peninsula, in particular, it is a change of land use that should not exist because they are jungles, the law indicates that changes of land use in jungles are only by exception,” warns Zúñiga about the southeastern region of the country. Despite the fact that the process for changing land use in the country’s jungles is more rigorous, deforestation in this region has not stopped.

Both entities are among those that report the greatest loss of forest hectares, as well as a high incidence of fires. Zúñiga questions the fact that in these states the productive activity par excellence for decades has been cattle ranching and that there are no programs to encourage the use of forests. “The authorities should discourage changes in land use and encourage the forestry economy. There are no programs to encourage forest harvesting. They have land and convert it to what they know,” he says.

For Zúñiga, boosting the economies that work around forests is a way forward, so he highlights the government programs that work in coordination with forest communities for their use and protection. For example, he mentions the Support Program for Sustainable Forest Development, which supports the owners of hectares of forests, jungles, mangroves, wetlands through payment for “environmental services”, such as timber production or tourism. “In Campeche and some states where there has been a lot of deforestation due to cattle ranching, an environmental compensation program is being explored to restore pastures, to put more trees on their land, as part of their productive activity,” he explains. The specialist indicates that these silvopastoral systems allow forest communities to subsist while they migrate to sustainable natural resource management models.

?? Another example is the AMBIO cooperative, located in the southern state of Chiapas. This organization works on the implementation of integrated land management projects for the sustainable use of jungle resources. They have even developed protocols to combat and restore after forest fires. “That is the way, they know the history of fire in their region, they make maps, they know what is going to happen, they control that a fire is not of great proportions and then they take measures for restoration. That should be in the whole country”, he assures.