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History
of the Region
The monarch butterfly overwintering area is made of what is commonly called "ejido land". The residents of this land, the ejidatarios,
struggled for generations to own their own land. Article 27 of the
1917 Constitution finally established a system to support communal
land ownership and control. These land sharing groups are called
ejidos and indigenous communities. They have a full set of land
tenure laws. These unique communities characterize the monarch region
in Mexico.
Since 1980, the nature reserve in the Monarch Region has been redefined
3 times. The most well known being the 1986 set-up of four monarch
sanctuaries or protected areas. The goal was to preserve
the monarch habitat in the oyamel forests where the butterfly was
known to overwinter. The current reserve is an adaptation on this
1986 decree; instead of four separate sanctuaries, it is contiguous
and includes most of the known biologically sensitive areas within
its boundaries.
Engaging local community members, the Mexican government, in collaboration
with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Fondo Mexicano para la
Conservacion de la Naturaleza (FMCN), ratified the reserve as we
know it today. Called the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, it
outlaws logging in the Core Zone and covers over 139,000 acres of
mountainous pine and oyamel forest.
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