Rain forest in Mexico: research and conservation at Los Tuxtlas Alejandro Estrada and Rosamond Coates-Estrada Human settlements, cattle ranching and rain forest destruction in the area of Los Tuxtlas (A. Estrada). The rain forests of southern Mexico re- present the northernmost extent of this ecosystem in the Americas. In the past 30 years half of these forests have been destroyed; only three patches remain where once forest stretched unbroken from Veracruz to Chiapas. But at a university research station set up in 1967 something is being done. The authors, Rain forest in Mexico who work at the station, describe the conservation, research and education taking place there and the important role the station has in persuading the com- munity of the necessity of conserving the country's rain forests. Mexico's tropical rain forests, which occur in the southern states of Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche and Chiapas, are estimated to have once covered 201 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003060530002514X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.70.40.11, on 04 Aug 2019 at 22:45:34, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at