In Mexico, worry that Maya Train will destroy jungle

Miguel Ángel Díaz walks slowly so his footfall on dry leaves doesn’t drive away what he’s trying to find in this dense forest of seeded breadnut and sapodilla trees. Coming to a small wetland, a sign warns: Beware of the crocodile.

Díaz, a tourist guide, shines a laser pointer at a woodpecker and a toucan, and then moves it over to the blue tail of a Yucatecan jay. He learned years ago to decipher the sounds of the Calakmul jungle in Mexico’s southern Yucatan.

Although it’s high season, this recent morning Díaz had a hard time finding tourists to guide. Last year, just over 50,000 visitors came to Calakmul, home to an ancient Mayan city that today is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Díaz knows many more people will soon come.

“There will be more jobs for us guides,” said Díaz, from the shade of a tree full of lianas. “But it’s going to be a heavy blow to nature.”

Some 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the crocodile wetland, bulldozers are felling the jungle for the Maya Train, a $20 billion dollar project envisioned by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. A path 40 meters (130 feet) wide is making way for the train, and logs are stacked along the narrow road to the hidden archaeological site. Currently, from the top of nearly-deserted pyramids, the roar of howler monkeys sounds across a sea of green.

The Maya Train is intended to drive economic development to some of the country’s poorest areas, in part by bringing up to three million tourists each year.

Fonatur, the national tourism agency, says the train will address a lack of transport infrastructure in the country’s southeast that has meant “not all our tourist destinations have been fully developed.” There will be 20 stations along the ride, where hotels and commercial markets are planned. It will also be a cargo route for fuel and farm products.

The 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) of rail will pass through unique ecosystems, including the limestone formations filled with freshwater known as cenotes along the Mayan Riviera. This raised a wave of criticism and lawsuits last year that got international attention and temporarily halted the work.

Now the focus has shifted to this section that crosses the intact Calakmul jungle, which is part of the larger Mayan jungle, the largest tropical forest in the Americas after the Amazon.

“I’m not against the train, but for a megaproject of this type, planning normally takes more than 10 years,” said British primatologist Kathy Slater, who has been working in Calakmul for a decade with the organization Operation Wallacea. “But this is without planning, it’s crazy, they’re not thinking about the impacts.”