Bosque de la Ciudad loses more than 90% of its natural reserve due to constructions and urban infrastructure.
Mazatlan, Sin. Considered Mazatlans city lungs, over 12 hectares of green area by decree served long as space conservation and protection of flora and fauna, today the Forest City undergoes a complete collapse, he there are eight thousand 200 square meters of natural reserve, that is, 6.83% of its original surface.
Little by little and over the years, the land designated as City Forest has been strangled and sacrificed by its own and strangers, although its use is of a green area as established by a decree published in the Official Gazette of the Federation, on September 14, 1979, through which a land of 30 hectares is donated outside the Airport and Auxiliary Services, to the Autonomous University of Sinaloa and to the Mazatlan community.
Gone is the initiative to maintain this area as a place of recreation and approach to the environment and wildlife, according to an initiative sent in 1978 by the then governor Alfonso G. Calderón and approved by the State Congress, for the construction of the Aquarium Mazatlan, as part of the project.
The Forest of the City was conceived as a space for recreation and conservation of the flora and fauna of the region, to the extent that the Master Plan for Urban Development of the city of Mazatlan contemplates, within its environmental strategy, the protection of the lagoon of the Camarón that forms part of the zone of the Forest of the City.
However, urban development was engulfing it to the point of suffocating it.
Within the area, the Mazatlan Aquarium was built; a power substation of the CFE, the building of the Union of Education Workers, section 80; a multipurpose court, a skate park, outdoor courts and gymnasiums, and more recently, Bahia Street or Paseo Mazatlan, as well as the works of Parque Central Mazatlan, which projects an area of 32.54 hectares, and covers almost all the polygon of the Forest and the lagoon of the Camarón.
What is left? Only one land of 8,200 square meters, less than one hectare, where the Center for Agricultural and Environmental Education operates and the nursery of the Ecological Council of Mazatlan, which is intended as a space for the conservation of flora and fauna.
A CONSTANT STRUGGLE
David Ocampo Peraza, president of the Center for Agricultural and Environmental Education (CEAA), believes that the cement buildings have ruined the preservation and preservation project of the City Forest.
He assures that the struggle has been constant so that the Camarón lagoon is not continued, which represents a natural space not only for the flora and fauna of the region, but also for the birds that migrate to this place for its reproduction.
And he points out that one of the objectives of the CEAA is precisely to defend this polygon, which by decree is stipulated as a preservation zone.
For many years, he adds, the struggle has been tenacious; environmentalists and environmentalists have joined together to demand that the polygon of the City Forest be delimited, including the Camarón lagoon for its protection, but there are those who have refused, arguing that it is not a lagoon.
“To all of us, who can tell us that there is no gap, and all the gaps have a regulation for their protection, we have always fought and fought so that the polygon of protection of that lagoon is defined and delimited; it is a shame, there is no polygon protecting the lagoon and therefore most of those around, hotels are still getting and filling, they continue to deposit drainage in that area, in that lagoon; For many years, there has been no one who says let’s regularize this area, there is still no one, “he said.
Since 2004, the struggle in defense of this ecological zone has intensified, as the project of an electric power substation by CFE, on the side of the Aquarium, was made known, arguing that “the land was neither a pond nor a forest “natural”, whose management and construction process lasted until 2017, when it was put into operation.
Subsequently, in 2006, the building of the Education Workers’ Syndicate, section 80, was built and inaugurated, which was next to the Camarón lagoon.
The Ecological Center of Mazatlan filed a lawsuit for the City Council to lose its rights over the City Forest, for attempting against an ecological conservation site such as the Camarón Lagoon, and although a judge issued a definitive suspension order for the construction of the union building and requested the demolition of the property to cover a water outlet, the mayor in turn, Alejandro Higuera, ignored the order.
Source: el sol de mazatlan
The Mazatlan Post
