2008

BBVA Foundation Prize for Acts of Biodiversity Conservation in Latin America to the Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda

The jury of the BBVA Foundation Prize for Acts of Biodiversity Conservation in Latin America conceded the prize that recognizes work carried out by non-profit entities to the Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda for its Management Program for the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve (Mexico), “for demonstrating that biodiversity conservation generates wealth and well-being to the local population. The original and innovative activities carried out have permitted gaining important environmental objectives while there is a parallel improvement in the lives of the inhabitants of the area.”  Roberto Pedraza Muñoz, co-founder and Executive Director of the Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda received the $250,000.00 (euro) prize in Madrid, Spain.

Click to read the official news bulletin

Crossed Wires or a Threatened Paradise?

One branch of Mexico’s government seems not to have gotten the memo about the country’s most valuable protected area.


Mexico has nominally protected some tracts of its vast and diverse natural heritage for nearly a century, but only in recent decades have its governments taken strong action to back up the legal designation of ‘Natural Protected Area’ with resources, personnel and clear management plans. Current President Felipe Calderón has been especially energetic, expanding both the acreages under protection and the budget of the country’s National Commission for Protected Areas. So observers have been unsettled to discover recently that one branch of the Calderón administration appears to be out of the progressive loop, and is now threatening an area many consider to be the crown jewel in Mexico’s system of protected habitats.

full article

EVENT

Carnaval 2008 San Francisco, California

LA ZONA VERDE May 24th and 25th in The Mission

Viva Sierra Gorda shared a booth with Earth Island Institute in the Green Zone (La Zona Verde) during the Carnaval this year, educating the public about the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve and the civil conservation movement taking place to protect and restore the region.  We had eight volunteers at the booth who helped raise awareness, gave out materials and collected donations, sold the Viva Sierra Gorda t-shirt and collected signatures on a petition to protest a major threat to the integrity of the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve (click here to learn more).  Thanks to our volunteers outreach made a difference to the San Francisco and the Sierra Gorda community.

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Viva Sierra Gorda is co-sponsoring at the World Birding Center in McAllen Texas an exhibition of original paintings by Dana Gardner (http://www.partnersinflight.org/events/mcallen/) featuring charismatic birds in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve native vegetation. Join us in McAllen, Texas, February 14 – 17th when Dana Gardner will present his original watercolor illustrations of charismatic birds of the Sierra Gorda and Northeast of Mexico .

In January, the International Foundations for Indigenous Peoples (http://www.internationalfunders.org/) will hold its first meeting outside the USA, in Queretaro Mexico, home of the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve. Sierra Gorda´s grassroots partners are both participants and destinations for the attendees.

2007

"Two part news report on Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve

http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/14559  

"Sierra Gorda I: An Environmentally Connected World"                                                            
 "Sierra Gorda II: Keeping Jobs in Mexico"
                                                                                                                                                      

BBC World Documentary (Spanish) "Haciendo Frente: México. La protección de los bosques ayuda a combatir los efectos del calentamiento.

" YOUTUBE.COM Entrevista
con Pati Ruiz Corzo, Directora, Reserva de la Biosfera Sierra Gorda. Por Ecosystemmarketplace.com

Primera Parte

Segunda Parte

Tercera Parte

Sierra Gorda Ecotours, the official service provider of the Biosphere Reserve, is beginning to operate within the Ecolodge Network, a series of community-run ecotourism sites. Come see and experience rural life from the semi-desert to the mountain cloud forests in the most ecosystem diverse natural protected area in megadiverse Mexico. “See the first major public photographic exposition of the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve touring different counties in Queretaro State during 2006. For more details…”

Viva Sierra Gorda is a project of   Earth Island Institute.