Mexico forest faces fire, armed men, squatters

The fire at the Bosque de la Primavera, "Forest of Springtime," on the edge of the western city of Guadalajara, has consumed 18,500 acres, (7,500 hectares), or about one-quarter of the preserve, officials said Wednesday.

The fire, which began over the weekend, has sent plumes of smoke and ash into Mexico's second-largest city, forcing dozens of schools to close. It is the latest chapter in a larger battle in Mexico to save public forests from development, logging, pollution and fires fueled by droughts.

"It was started in a clandestine dump near a squatters' camp where, every year, the inhabitants start fires, clearly deliberately, to take over park land," said Alvaro Garcia Chavez, the chief firefighting official for Jalisco state.

Hernando Rodolfo Guerrero, the federal attorney general for environmental protection, said Tuesday there was evidence the fire was intentionally set and promised to bring those responsible to justice.

Garcia Chavez said authorities had to extinguish 14 fires in the last year in the same area.

Environment Secretary Juan Elvira Quesada said later the fire had been completely contained and 70 percent extinguished by late Wednesday, but expressed fears that fire has become the new tool of land-hungry developers in Mexico.

Elvira Quesada said the Guadalajara blaze was the third suspicious fire following the same pattern at Mexican parks in less than a year.

This weekend's blaze got out of control because of the accumulation of leaves and branches on the forest floor, but once controlled on Sunday, it sprang up again on several fronts, something that he said "did not follow the natural pattern of a forest fire."

Something similar happened at a forest reserve in the neighboring state of Michoacan in 2011 and at a park outside of the Caribbean resort of Cancun earlier this year.

"The similarity is that, once it was controlled, the fires started up again at several points," Elvira Quesada said. "Somebody has an interest in keeping these fires going, somebody has an interest in doing away with natural areas ... to open up land for development."