Protecting the Mountains and Their People.

• Author: VANDERPOOL, TIM
• Position: Mexico's Sierra Madre Alliance is fighting to stop both logging and the growing of marijuana or opium in the Sierra Madre Mountains - Brief Article

Chihuahua City, Mexico

"Number one, we want to stop the logging," says Randy Gingrich. In the Sierra Madre, he explains, the twin demons of drugs and timber are inextricably entwined. Gingrich heads the Sierra Madre Alliance, a group fighting to protect the rich ecosystem of Mexico's remote Sierra Madre Mountains from the international lumber industry. The alliance is also working to protect roughly 60,000 Tarahumara Indians from the ravages of Mexico's pervasive drug trade.

International development money has encouraged logging with massive road-building projects into the mountains. But Gingrich and the Alliance plan to counteract the development. "We want to establish a federal certified reserve, a 1.3 million-acre protected area," says Gingrich. That sanctuary would eventually become part of a three-million-acre Sierra Tarahumara Biosphere Reserve. The reserve would employ indigenous people as trained stewards.

The Alliance is seeking economic alternatives for the Tarahumara that don't involve the timber industry or cultivation of marijuana or opium, Gingrich says. The group has also...