Socioeconomic Factors Involved in Conservation of Forest Strips (tolchés and tolkaáx) Under Traditional Management on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21509787 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Samuel Israel Levy-Tacher (0000-0002-8853-4810, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, corresponding author), Carlos H Ávila-Bello (0000-0003-4916-8675, Universidad Veracruzana, corresponding author), Elisa Levy-Tacher (Florida State University, corresponding author), Ann Greenberg (Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México), Paola Noemí Ortiz-Colin (Virginia Commonwealth University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Ecology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0300-7839 • E-ISSN: 1572-9915 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10745-026-00710-4 |
| OpenAlex | W7167725261 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
We examined socioeconomic factors that promote and threaten conservation of Mayan community forest reserves on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. We recorded peasants’ perceptions of reserve management and history, as well as current socioeconomic pressures on these reserves, in 13 rural participatory evaluation workshops held in Maya communities in the states of Campeche and Quintana Roo. Participants indicated that these reserves provide firewood, construction materials, medicine, protection from hurricanes, pollen and nectar for beekeeping, and shade for people in transit. Tolché and tolkaáx reserves are preserved through traditional practices, including the establishment of firebreaks and the regulated extraction of timber. Principal factors in their degradation include uncontrolled agricultural burning, commercial timber felling, the spread of mechanized agriculture by Mennonite immigrants and agroindustry, the expansion of livestock raising, the growth of villages, the widening of paths and roads, and the conversion of forest to cropland, all backed by federal incentives. The greatest contribution of tolchés and tolkaáx is that they serve as ecological corridors that facilitate forest regeneration and transit of fauna. To maintain this community-based conservation approach, holistic public policy grounded in local knowledge is needed to promote symbiosis between peasant production and ecological restoration on the Yucatan Peninsula
Agriculture · Deforestation (computer science) · Forest management · Livestock · Nature reserve · Peasant · Resource (disambiguation) · Socioeconomic status · SWOT Analysis · Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Ethnobotanical and Medicinal Plants Studies
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| Highly cited | No |
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