The Sierra de Manantlan Biosphere Reserve (SMBR), covering 139,577 hectares in Jalisco and Colima States, was formally decreed a Biosphere Reserve in 1987. Its biodiversity importance results from its geographical location on the divide between the temperate and tropical regions, and also its topographic, edaphic, climatic and altitudinal diversity, resulting in the occurrence of many species, frequently endemic and/or rare. Most of the area is under forest cover, ranging from dry-deciduous through evergreen forest to high-elevation cloud forest. For the communities within and on the boundaries of the Reserve, agriculture, livestock and forest exploitation activities (both legal and illegal) remain the basis of family income. There has been a history of forest exploitation in the area which has not provided direct benefit to the communities. To improve incomes through the sustainable use of natural resources by the communities, changes are needed in land use practices to avoid further environmental degradation.

To adapt approaches to land use and exploitation compatible with raising incomes and conserving the biological diversity of the natural resource base in elected areas of the Sierra Manantlan Biosphere Reserve

• Sustainable community-based forest management implemented in one ejido and feasibility studies completed to extend this practice to other communities in the reserve buffer zone.
• A sound understanding of the socio-economic basis of land use by communities resident in the Sierra de Manantlan Biosphere Reserve, and the incorporation of a significant level of socio-economics into the work of the Manantlan Ecology Institute.
• An operational applied agroforestry research and demonstration programme, based on a sound understanding of socio-economic and current land use practices in the Sierra de Manantlan Biosphere Reserve.