Lacandon Jungle

The Lacandon Jungle (Spanish: Selva Lacandona) is an area of rainforest which stretches from Chiapas, Mexico, into Guatemala. The heart of this rainforest is located in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas near the border with Guatemala in the Montañas del Oriente region of the state. Although much of the jungle outside the reserve has been cleared, the Lacandon is still one of the largest montane rainforests in Mexico. It contains 1,500 tree species, 33% of all Mexican bird species, 25% of all Mexican animal species, 56% of all Mexican diurnal butterflies and 16% of all Mexico's fish species.

The Lacandon in Chiapas is also home to a number of important Mayan archaeological sites including Palenque, Yaxchilan and Bonampak, with numerous smaller sites which remain partially or fully unexcavated. This rainforest, especially the area inside the Biosphere Reserve, is a source of political tension, pitting the EZLN or Zapatistas and their indigenous allies who want to farm the land against international environmental groups and the Lacandon Maya, the original indigenous group of the area and the one that holds the title to most of the lands in the Montes Azules.

The jungle has approximately 1.9 million hectares stretching from southeast Chiapas into northern Guatemala and into the southern Yucatán Peninsula. The Chiapas portion is located on the Montañas del Oriente (Eastern Mountains) centered on a series of canyonlike valleys called the Cañadas, between smaller mountain ridges oriented from northwest to southeast. It is bordered by the Guatemalan border on two sides with Comitán de Domínguez to the southwest and the city of Palenque to north. Dividing the Chiapas part of the forest from the Guatemalan side is the Usumacinta River, which is the largest river in Mexico and the seventh largest in the world based on volume of water.

The core of the Chiapas forest is the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, but it also includes some other protected areas such as Nahá–Metzabok, Bonampak, Yaxchilan, Chan-Kin, Lacan-Tun, and the communal reserve of La Cojolita.

The area has a mostly hot and humid climate (Köppen Amg) with most rain falling from summer into fall, with an average of 2,300 to 2,600 millimetres (91 to 102 in) per year. There is a short dry season from March to May when as little as 30 millimetres (1.2 in) falls. The average annual temperature is 24.7 °C (76.5 °F). The abundance of rain supports a large number of small rivers and streams many of which are fast moving and have waterfalls, such as the Agua Azul and the Lacanja waterfalls. The soils of the area are mostly clay and lacking phosphorus but sufficient to support a large diversity of plant species.

Despite the fact that much of the area has been reduced to a patchwork of clearings for cattle ranches and peasant communities, the Lacandon contains some of the most extensive and best preserved remnants of lower montane rainforest in Mexico and Central America. The best conserved area is within the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, which has about 290,000 hectares of the Reserve in good condition. The Lacandon is the best known of Mexico's rainforest areas because of the attention it has received in the press and efforts by international organizations to protect what is left of it. The Lacandon is one of the most biodiverse rainforests in the world, with as much as 25% of Mexico's total species diversity. The predominant native vegetation is perennial high rainforest with trees that can grow to an average height of thirty meters and often to fifty or sixty including Guatteria anomala, Ceiba pentandra, Swietenia macrophylla, Terminalia amazonia and Ulmus mexicana. Mammoth guanacaste trees shrouded in vines and bromeliads among clear running streams, enormous ferns, palms and wild elephant's ear plants can still be seen. One of the most common plants is Cynodon plectostachyus, a non-native grass species introduced as a pasture crop for livestock. It has 1,500 tree species, 33% of all Mexican bird species, 25% of all Mexican animal species, 44% of all Mexican diurnal butterflies and 10% of all Mexico's fish species. The jungle contains many endangered species such as the red macaw, the eagle, the tapir, the spider monkey, the howler monkeys, and the swamp crocodile. Jaguars are reported from this forest.

Its size and biodiversity has designated it as a "biodiversity hotspot" by the Washington, DC, based environmental group Conservation International and under the Puebla-Panama Plan. It is part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which aims to link similar sites from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec down through Central America for conservation purposes. This is especially true for those "hotspots" located in remote trans-border tropical forests.

There are two major attractions in the Chiapas portion of this rainforest, the El Chiflón Waterfall and the Gruta de San Francisco cave. El Chiflón is located 53 kilometres (33 mi) west of Comitán de Domínguez formed by the San Vicente Rivers. The water falls from a height of over seventy meters surrounded by steeply sloped hills. El Chiflón is preceded by two smaller falls called Suspiro and Ala del Angel, which are about six meters in height. A cascade after it is called the Velo de Novia. The Gruta de San Francisco is located in the La Trinitaria municipality near the community of Santa María. The cave has a number of chambers filled with stalactites and stalagmites with capricious shapes, formed by the dripping of water through the cavity. These caves were considered sacred in the pre Hispanic period as passages to the underworld. The cave is also home to millions of bats which emerge at night to feed in the surrounding jungle.