Once again, voices of alert arise in Yucatecan territory in reference to the infamous Tren Maya, one of the priority projects of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The concept of “Environmental Crime” covers a wide variety of activities that breach environmental legislation and cause significant harm or risk to the environment, human health, or both.
In the case of the Tren Maya, this project would be killing and/or destroying protected wild animal or plant species, and their habitat.
Sociologist Luis Ramírez Carrillo, of the Center for Regional Research “Dr. Hideyo Noguchi ”of the Autonomous University of Yucatan, believes that the train is doomed to fail if no changes are made to the scheme proposed by the federal administration.
The UADY researcher says that this ambitious project “is not feasible as a passenger train, as a tourist train and as a freight train at the same time.”
“A proposal to improve the railway infrastructure in the Peninsula talking about cargo trains, is definitely interesting, but this is not the concept of the Maya Train. They want to transport passengers for tourism purposes, and that’s absolutely no good for the natural habitat of thousands of plants and animals, ”says Ramírez.
In 2016, a local resident found two abandoned jaguar cubs in a field in Calakmul, Campeche. (PHOTO: sipse.com)
And talking about environmental hazards, it is without a doubt, an environmental crime against nature to build railroad tracks or a road across the Calakmul reserve in the state of Campeche.”
The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve is located at the base of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, in Calakmul Municipality in the state of Campeche, bordering the Guatemalan department of El Petén to the south. It occupies 7,231 km² and includes about 12% of the subperennial jungles of Mexico.
The Yucatan Times Newsroom
