The U.S. State Department warns American citizens not to travel on this road, but then you would miss out on the tacos.

It was hard to tell which stories were true and which were simply embellished.On the first day of the workshop, we drove into the forest to practice setting up motion-sensitive wildlife cameras. Recognized worldwide for their great biodiversity, cloud forests or tropical montane cloud forests are a severely threatened ecosystem in Mexico. “La Banda Está Borracha” — “The Band is Drunk” — blared from one of the trucks.We were driving through the cloud forest in the Sierra de Cacoma, the coastal mountains of Jalisco, Mexico.

He claimed a puma always watched from a hidden cave as he tended his avocado orchards. It was time for a , a pit stop. An hour in, the caravan pulled over a wide turnout on the dirt road. I sat in the back seat of the third car, praying we wouldn’t tumble off the steep mountainside on the next turn.Sherry Devlin is a longtime Montana journalist who, for 25 years, covered natural resources and the environment for the Missoulian.

Finding these animals in their backyard made some people nervous, but it also made them proud. One man told us about a puma that entered his neighbor’s cabin and crawled into the man’s bed while he was asleep. She is an editor/reporter for Treesource.org and can be reached at That’s why they learned how to document the wildlife on their properties.

They showed us where pumas stalked outside their cabins at night and they reenacted jaguar calls.

Drive past the small reservoir on the right with signs that say “Evita la Caza.” Later, you’ll pass an abandoned corral on the left. You’ll want a vehicle with four-wheel drive, but your truck will inevitably get stuck. Then head north toward Ayutita or Jalocote.

Cloud forests, both in Mexico and beyond, are particularly known for having a high level of endemic animal species taking up residence within them.So, if you’re interested in anything from big cats to birds, insects to amphibians, a visit to a Mexican cloud forest is practically compulsory. Cloud forest grows on the mountains above tropical rain forest and below temperate forests.

They argued about what the different cats were called.

In May or June, stop by the centro to get some fresh pitayas — a brain-like fruit that tastes a little like watermelon. Over the course of the next year, these landowners photographed a jaguar walking in broad daylight, a pair of pumas drinking at a watering hole and a trigrillo inspecting one of the wildlife cameras. As their name indicates, they are covered with clouds a good part of the year and it rains constantly. There is a great diversity of epiphytes, this is plants that grow on the trees without damaging them, such as orchids, bromeliads and woody vines. Representatives from several ejidos in the area met with us for the workshop.Treefecta!

They may not actually know how to get there, but they’ll be happy to point you in the wrong direction. Recognized worldwide for their great biodiversity, cloud forests or tropical montane cloud forests are a severely threatened ecosystem in Mexico. There are no signs, so you’ll just have to guess where the turn is.To get back down, you’ll need six Toyota trucks, two bottles of tequila, a powerful stereo and a copy of “La Banda Está Borracha.”

Once you get the truck back on the road, keep driving into the mountains. The cloud forest of Jalisco, Mexico, is home to six species of wild cats, rarely seen but certainly a presence in the ecosystem. This diagnosis is the result of the work of experts from academic and research institutions, non-governmental organizations and government agencies.CONABIO makes the results of the analysis of priority available to the authorities, academics, resource owners and society in general, in order to make informed and more appropriate decisions to achieve the maintenance of the tropical montane cloud forest and the services it provides. Cloud forests in Mexico can be found in certain mountain peaks. After asking a few different people, you’ll likely be going in the right direction.Once you leave town, the road quickly turns to dirt. Photo: Matthew Hyde It seemed like each community used different names.Probably half the stories were apocryphal.

Their lives are tightly tied to the forests; ultimately, they will determine how or if it is protected.To reach the Sierra de Cacoma, travel southeast on Highway 80 from Guadalajara toward La Huerta. CONABIO has therefore begun to direct its efforts to contribute to the maintenance of these very important ecosystems. We hoped the people living in these mountains could use their knowledge of the area to document the wildlife on their land.Most of the people in the caravan were ranchers, members of an , a kind of communally held land ownership common in rural Mexico.

This work represents a further step in the series of efforts CONABIO has undertaken to document and assess the state of natural resources in MexicoThis paper provides an overview of the current status of tropical montane cloud forest: its conservation status, the threats it faces and the many opportunities and potential for its management and conservation.

Mexican cloud forest comprises only 1% of Mexico, yet harbours 10% of all Mexican plants. The need to identify those areas of tropical montane cloud forest within the country where actions towards their sustainable management and conservation are most urgent has motivated CONABIO to organize and develop workshops the products of which are presented in this work.

Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. The man who told us the puma story crawled in front of the camera to simulate an animal walking by.At the end of the workshop, we gave each ejido a trail camera and a GPS unit.