Sustainable forest management and stewardship in Mexico: Gains, challenges and lessons

Mexico, one of the world's 10 mega-diverse countries, has 56.5 million hectares of forest of high global value. Biodiversity occurs in a wide variety of forest ecosystems: humid and dry tropical forests and various types of temperate forests. Together with richness in terms of number of species, Mexican forests also host very high genetic diversity, as it appears to be one of the centers of origin of pinus and quercus. High biological productivity is another key feature of these forest areas, as pine forests in Central Mexico enjoy growth rates of 15 square meters of timber per hectare per year, three to five times higher than those found in natural forests in the United States and Canada.