El Cerro de La Virgen, Culiacán, Sinaloa como propuesta de área natural protegida: conservando los bosques secos

Abstract

The municipality of Culiacán, Sinaloa, México, does not have Natural Protected Areas (ANP) under municipal decree and, since 2004, lacks an ANP to protect its dry forest. Within state normative, it manages the Tacuichamona mountain range, shared by the municipalities of Cosalá and Elota, enacted in 2020. The current study aims to describe woody plant richness, risk categories, vegetation types, and conservation status of the Cerro de la Virgen, Culiacán, Sinaloa. INEGI’s cartography was consulted with an available 1:1 000 000 and 1:250 000 scale to describe the geographic location, and the physical and biological variables, resulting in a BS1 (h´)w climate, with its geology composed of andesite-andesite tuff, ignimbrite- rhyolite tuff, granodiorite, and alluvium; vertisol soil with tropical deciduous forest vegetation and secondary vegetation. Transects were traced for listing the woody plants, adding 0.1 ha. The in-situ identification was carried out by specialists. To determine the national endangered status, the NOM 059-SERMARNAT-2010 was consulted, together with the International Red List (UICN). It resulted in a richness of 18 families, 49 genera, and 51 species of woody plants. Sitting in the richness range of taxa described by Gentry (Between 50 and 70 species) for tropical dry forests in America. The family with the highest quantity of genera was Fabaceae, and the genus with the highest richness was Bursera. Regarding the extinction risk status from the national legislation, four species were registered: Two under Special Protection (Pr) and two under the Threatened status (A). According to IUCN, a total of 40 species are counted. It is required to issue more decrees to compensate for deforestation by land-use change. For this reason, the decree of the Cerro de la Virgen as an ANP Will increase the conservation cover in 914.83 ha of dry forest of Sinaloa México. Partially amending the loss of vegetation surface in forests and jungles. Additionally, it would shelter multiple environmental, ecological and cultural services that dry forests provide, materializing the conservation jurisprudence of natural areas and would support international organizations' conservation efforts for 2030.