How does the Environmental Gendarmerie work?
Given its security and police operation model, the Gendarmerie's mission is to prevent crimes and administrative offenses in environmental matters. Thousands of officers have been deployed in 24 Protected Natural Areas and have carried out numerous tactical and operational actions.
Its mission is to guarantee and safeguard the Protected Natural Areas of federal jurisdiction, to protect the fundamental right of people to have a healthy and sustainable environment. It is also responsible for safeguarding people's integrity, as well as guaranteeing, maintaining, and restoring order and peace in Mexico's 182 NPAs.
The Gendarmerie is a task specialization that is part of the collaboration of the National Security Commission, through the Federal Police and the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), which have given the Gendarmerie Division the mission of preventing crimes and administrative offenses in environmental matters, due to its security and police operation model. Years after its creation, it has thousands of elements distributed in 24 Protected Natural Areas and has carried out more than ten thousand tactical operational actions.
Training
To carry out the Environmental Mission, the Federal Police has the support of the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (Conanp) and the Federal Attorney's Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa). These institutions provided training to the tenth generation of the Gendarmerie Division on biodiversity concepts, administrative offenses, permits, and requirements, the legal origin of natural resources, ecosystem conservation, prohibited conduct, administrative sanctions, environmental crimes, protection of endangered wildlife, among others. In addition to environmental training, the tenth generation of the Gendarmerie has courses in Ambush, Counter Ambush, and Special Operations, which allows them to enter areas that are difficult to access to combat criminal organizations head-on.
Strategy
The deployment of the specialized group for the attention and prevention of environmental crimes is based on a diagnosis of the problem of natural protected areas, carried out in collaboration with Conanp and Profepa. The new Environmental Mission is developed not only through the efforts of a specialized group but also with the capabilities of the rest of the Federal Police Divisions and the Gendarmerie Division itself, to achieve better results. The Federal Police contributes to protecting the fundamental right of people to have a healthy and sustainable environment. This is possible through tactical and reactive skills, as well as by building bonds of trust with the community.
Achievements
One of its first and most symbolic results is the 94 percent reduction in illegal logging in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, there has also been an evident decrease in environmental crimes (illegal logging of precious woods, poaching of jaguar and priority species) in the area since the presence of the Gendarmerie.
