Ricardo Luna Garcia, the Secretary of the Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change (Semarnacc), recognized that there were at least 35 thousand illegal avocado orchards in Michoacan.
In the framework of the Mother Earth Meeting, the state official said that these orchards operated without the corresponding land use change permits.
Therefore, he said, operations will continue to recover land and uninstall orchards.
In this regard, he said, to date there have been a total of 16 operations in different locations, such as Uruapan, Tacambaro, Zitacuaro, and Villa Madero.
Luna Garcia also said that the installation of avocado orchards and man- made forest fires were the two main causes of deforestation in the state.
He said they estimated that at least 40 percent of the fires that occur in forested areas were created to change land use and that they had already taken measures to prevent this.
He said that they were conducting an inventory of all the affected lands, in order to make them protected natural areas by decree.
"This will stop all of the people who think they can install avocado orchards on them from doing so," he said.
Apart from declaring these lands as protected areas, the government would also implement management and reforestation programs in them.
The official said that, as a result of fires, the state lost at least 16 thousand hectares of forests and grasslands every year.
Source: Notimex