Jaguar Guardians — community youth protecting Mexico's last wild jaguars

Project story

Ejido Centauro del Norte leads this project. Terraetica Foundation provides technical and financial support at the community's request.

The ejido protects 9,994 hectares of tropical forest in the heart of the Selva Maya, one of the last intact jaguar corridors in Mesoamerica, adjacent to the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve and part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Its 301 inhabitants, chose conservation over extraction. In 2017, the ejido was certified as a Voluntary Conservation Area.

The same forest harbors Baird's tapir, there are ~3,000 remaining individuals worldwide, classified as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. The tapir is the forest's gardener: it disperses seeds, maintains water sources, and signals ecosystem health. Where tapir survives, the entire food web is intact. Protecting jaguar habitat is protecting tapir habitat.

Terraetica has worked alongside this community for four years. We currently have 10 camera traps documenting active jaguar and tapir presence across the corridor. Now we are building the infrastructure to make that stewardship permanent. The stakes

Ejido Centauro del Norte sits in one of the most marginalized municipalities in Mexico. For young people here, options are few , and criminal recruitment is a documented reality in the region. Environmental education and paid ranger roles are not just conservation tools. They are an alternative future.

A young person who learns to read camera trap data, who earns income protecting jaguar corridors, who sees scientists travel from around the world to study their forest , that person has a reason to stay, and a reason to protect what their community has built.

"I thought about my children and then about their children's children, and I realised it was the best decision I could make." Gelasio Maldonado, Ejido Supervisory Council

We are not just conserving jaguars. We are conserving the generation that will do it after us.

What this funding builds

Camera traps — Community-owned biodiversity monitoring. Data stays with the ejido.

Water troughs — Dry season survival for jaguar, tapir, and prey species across the corridor.

Scientist quarters — The ejido as a research hub , knowledge exchange and community income stream.

Youth rangers — Paid stewardship roles for community youth. Intergenerational transfer of land knowledge.

Children's education — Environmental curriculum already running in neighboring ejidos, now brought home. How we regenerate

Every component of this project is community-led and community-owned. Rangers are recruited from the ejido's youth. Scientists sleep in rooms built and managed by local families. Camera trap data belongs to the community, not to an external institution. Water troughs restore ecosystem function for wildlife and signal to the entire watershed that this land is actively stewarded.

The children who attend environmental education today are the rangers of 2035. The scientists who sleep in ejido quarters bring knowledge that flows both ways. The jaguar that walks past a camera trap at 3am is proof that this community's decision to conserve — made against real economic pressure , is working.

Centauro del Norte is not asking for help , they are asking for resources to lead. This project is designed from the ground up to be a blueprint for the 72 campesino communities across Calakmul municipality. A community that trains its own rangers, hosts its own scientists, educates its own children, and documents its own wildlife doesn't need an external organization to survive. That is the model. That is what we are building together. Our team

Gelasio Maldonado — Field lead · Ejido Centauro del Norte Supervisory Council · decades of on-the-ground stewardship

Gabriela Méndez Saint-Martín — Field biologist · camera trap data and wildlife monitoring · Jaguar specialist

Ara Carvallo — Co-founder, Terraetica Foundation · trained ecologist · 28 years mobilizing the global drinks industry for jaguar conservation Track record

4 years active in Calakmul. 10 camera traps currently deployed with confirmed jaguar and tapir detections. Environmental education program already running in neighboring ejidos. Ara Carvallo (Terraetica co-founder) is supported by the global hospitality community , an unusual funding base that brings international visibility and a network of thousands of individual donors to grassroots conservation.

Funding requested $25,000