Morelia, Michoacán.- 40% of forest fires in Michoacanthey are provokedannounced the governor of the state through his Twitter account, indicates that the change of land use will not be allowed for the affected properties.
“Given the forest fires, what is currently happening, we have data that 40% of them have been caused, because we have news for you, by law, the change of land use will no longer be allowed”, says Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, governor of Michoacán.
In Michoacán, during the last decades, there has been a greater environmental impact in the forest areas of the avocado zone, the owners of plots that wanted to venture into the production of green gold, pthey set fire to the forest to later request the change of land use of the land and thus take advantage of their land.
Read more: Prosecutor of Michoacán CJNG is behind fires in Uruapan
This ecocide is now intended to stop with the «declarations of protection zones», a decree issued by the governor will block the administrative process so that the burned areas cannot make the changes for the exploitation of the land.
“Land use change will not be allowed for the next 20 years”, sentences the state president in his publication.
Last Monday, the head of the Ministry of the Environment, Alejandro Méndez López, pointed out that it is unknown how many hectares of forest have been converted into avocado orchards in the last 10 years, but that work will be done so that everything the damaged forest in Uruapan be declared an ecological reserve.
There are at least 1,500 hectares that the Government of Michoacán has detected, which have been set on fire by state avocado growers, but it has not reported what years these damages correspond to, it has only said that work is already being done to declare them as restoration zones. and environmental protection.
Adrián López Solís, attorney general of Michoacán, at the press conference on Monday, pointed out that it seems that the cartels operating in the Uruapan area are causing the fires as a distraction for the authorities and forcing them to remain in those areas.
When directly questioning the prosecutor if the fires in the main avocado municipality of Michoacán had been caused by criminals, he replied:
“Yes, we can establish the possibility, the criminal groups are causing distracting situations to divert the action of the authority, one to keep us busy fighting the fires and another to force us to be present where they are in dispute.”, he referred.
It should be noted that during the work to combat the fire in the town of Colorado Creek in Uruapan, two charred bodies were foundnext to them was high caliber gun magazines. The residents of the community said that alleged members of the CJNG set fire to some houses and the forest itself.
For his part, Alejandro Méndez has reported that other arsonists are the avocadoswho year after year undertake a campaign of fires to try to obtain benefits from the fires.
There are 350 thousand hectares that have been lost in the last decade by the forest fires caused, and that in the end have been taken advantage of by businessmen, who have used them for planting avocado, as well as for other agro-industries.
Read more: Two charred bodies found in Michoacán fire
To date, there is no exact calculation of how many of these territorial extensions have been used for the production and exploitation of green gold.
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