An hour in, the caravan pulled over a wide turnout on the dirt road. This may take an hour or more.
Towering firs and pines surrounded us on all sides, moss and lichens hanging from their branches. They may not actually know how to get there, but they’ll be happy to point you in the wrong direction. A fat man with his shirt halfway unbuttoned jumped out of the lead car with a bottle of tequila in each hand. “La Banda Está Borracha” — “The Band is Drunk” — blared from one of the trucks.We were driving through the cloud forest in the Sierra de Cacoma, the coastal mountains of Jalisco, Mexico. But the people living in these forests care about them deeply. When you get stuck, have everyone in the car get out and push it back onto the road.
They argued about what the different cats were called. We hoped the people living in these mountains could use their knowledge of the area to document the wildlife on their land.Most of the people in the caravan were ranchers, members of an , a kind of communally held land ownership common in rural Mexico. The leader of the ejido took us to a stream above a cattle pasture. Once you get the truck back on the road, keep driving into the mountains. Recognized worldwide for their great biodiversity, cloud forests or tropical montane cloud forests are a severely threatened ecosystem in Mexico. Cloud forests in Mexico can be found in certain mountain peaks.
With this publication, CONABIO provides a base to bring together existing knowledge regarding the state of tropical montane cloud forest in the country. A trek to the planet’s oldest, biggest, tallest treesWhen it comes to wildlife in the Sierra de Cacoma, the members of these ejidos were the experts.
He claimed a puma always watched from a hidden cave as he tended his avocado orchards. He did a quick shimmy, the music started, and everyone was out of the cars and dancing.
Photo: Matthew Hyde It was time for a , a pit stop. Take some Dramamine and continue on Highway 80 until you reach Autlán de Navarro. It seemed like each community used different names.Probably half the stories were apocryphal. The Sierra de Cacoma is a forgotten part of Mexico — ignored by the government because of inaccessibility, abandoned by farmers looking for work in the United States and avoided by academics because of drug cartels. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! A cloud forest is located at a higher altitude where you have clouds that come into the forest.
They showed us where pumas stalked outside their cabins at night and they reenacted jaguar calls. Then he showed us several massive feline footprints along a muddy riverbank. Their lives are tightly tied to the forests; ultimately, they will determine how or if it is protected.To reach the Sierra de Cacoma, travel southeast on Highway 80 from Guadalajara toward La Huerta. Keep going until you reach a fork in the road. CONABIO has therefore begun to direct its efforts to contribute to the maintenance of these very important ecosystems.
Drive past the small reservoir on the right with signs that say “Evita la Caza.” Later, you’ll pass an abandoned corral on the left. Over the course of the next year, these landowners photographed a jaguar walking in broad daylight, a pair of pumas drinking at a watering hole and a trigrillo inspecting one of the wildlife cameras. The cloud forest of Jalisco, Mexico, is home to six species of wild cats, rarely seen but certainly a presence in the ecosystem.
There are no signs, so you’ll just have to guess where the turn is.To get back down, you’ll need six Toyota trucks, two bottles of tequila, a powerful stereo and a copy of “La Banda Está Borracha.” As we barreled down the curvy mountain road en route home, I wondered what they would find.It didn’t take long for the photos to start coming in. We had heard rumors that the forests in Sierra de Cacoma harbored some of Mexico’s rare felines, but scientists needed evidence. She is an editor/reporter for Treesource.org and can be reached at Cloud forests, both in Mexico and beyond, are particularly known for having a high level of endemic animal species taking up residence within them.So, if you’re interested in anything from big cats to birds, insects to amphibians, a visit to a Mexican cloud forest is practically compulsory. Stop in Tecolotlán to get some tacos — you can buy them from the young men sitting on five-gallon paint buckets next to the speed bumps.
That’s why they learned how to document the wildlife on their properties. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. SIERRA de CACOMA, Mexico — The caravan of Toyota pickups careened down the twisting mountain road.
Thirty percent of all the flowering plants in the Mexican cloud forests are endemic to that ecosystem. Everyone took turns strapping the camera to a tree and programming it with different settings.