The above photo, taken in January 2007, points out plots planted in 1998 and 1999, which now green-up the mountainsides below El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary. Over 600 families have participated in the La Cruz Habitat Protection Project since 1997 by planting 2,454,565 trees with a survival rate of approximately 70%. Some plots will be managed to provide wood for daily needs and economic resources for this and future generations. Other plots will not be harvested, but are meant to prevent further erosion of soils and to restore water resources.

Since 2005, hundreds of thousands of trees have been distributed to communities in the Municipality of Zitacuaro, where local reforestation coordinator Padre Angel Espino Garcia works with the Mazahua indigenous people of Ejido Nicolas Romero and Ejido San Juan Zitacuaro on the slopes of Cerro Cacique within the buffer zone of the Cerro Pelon protected monarch area, as well as the San Juan Zitacuaro Indigenous Community and the Crescencio Morales Indigenous Community. PHOTO: At Crescencio Morales Indigenous Community Padre Angel surveys recently planted plot with Dorotea and Juan Soto.

At Crescencio Morales, Jose Luis Alvarez discusses progress of a tree plot with Padre Angel, Eulalia and Luis Antonio Garcia.

Baldemar Vanegas shows off LCHPP trees he planted seven (left) and four years earlier.

Over the years, tens of thousands of trees have been given to local schools. Teaching young people to care for the land on which they live is an important step in fostering stewardship, helping to assure that future generations will be blessed with healthy forests and a livable environment. In the photo, Jose Luis watches children at Ejido Primary School Benito Juarez plant tree seedlings on a bare slope adjacent to their school ground.