The Need

For untold decades, deforestation has crept across the mountainsides where the Monarch butterflies spend their winters, as the 100,000 or so inhabitants of the communities in the region eek out a living from the natural resources that are their birthright. The people’s right to utilize the economic resources they own has become a source of contention for environmentalists who want to preserve one of the world’s most important natural spectacles--the over-wintering of hundreds of millions of Monarch butterflies. Since the government declared the mountain peaks where the Monarchs roost as protected areas, and made it illegal to cut the trees, it has only made it harder for local families to earn a living. The Mexican Government and large NGOs have worked to try to restore the forests in order to protect the environment for the butterflies. These efforts, no matter how well funded and noble, did not address the core problem, the poverty of the communities.

1997 a New Vision is Born

Jose Luis Alvarez, a Mexican tree nurseryman, who was selling trees for these projects, devised a bold and innovative way to restore the forests and at the same time give the people a source of revenue. He would help them plant woodlots that would become sustainable forests from which they would harvest to meet their economic needs, while providing wildlife habitat and protecting fragile mountain soils. The theory was that this would take pressure off the protected areas by providing legal alternatives. It would help the people to pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty in which they were trapped. In 1997, working as the La Cruz Project, Alvarez convinced five families from the Ejido of El Rosario, near the Monarch Sanctuary of the same name, to take a risk by planting trees instead of corn or oats on 3.5 hectares (over 8.5 acres).

In 1998, with the help of Robert L. Small, who organized the Michoacan Reforestation Fund and raised money for the La Cruz Project from his home in California, 40,000 seedlings were given to twenty families. A team of couragous and determined believers joined forces and began to build the project, including (pictured above) Jose Luis Alvarez, Lincoln Brower, Bob Small and Ed Rashin. Bob Small passed away in November of 2004. In 2006, 420,000 trees were planted with funding from the Michoacan Reforestation Fund through grants from October Hill Foundation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, American Forests and others. An additional 40,000 trees were funded by Bimbo, a Mexican food corporation, and Fair Travel, a German travel company, bringing the year's total to 460,000 new trees. This year’s plantings bring the total seedlings planted by La Cruz Habitat Protection Project to nearly 2.5 million.

After Ten Years of Growth -- Rebirth

Now, La Cruz Habitat Protection Project is an American non-profit organization (La Cruz Habitat Protection Project, Inc.) with a goal of planting 1 million trees each year. Our planting sites will be broadened to include the watersheds of two important highland lakes, Lake Patzcuaro and Lake Zirahuen, and to restoring the ecology and biodiversity of Central Mexico and other parts of Latin America. To learn how you can help, please go to our contributions page.