Desierto de los Leones

El Desierto de los Leones was decreed a national park in 1917, which makes it the first in Mexico and one of the oldest in Latin America. It covers some 17 km² in the Sierra de las Cruces, within Mexico City itself, in the borough of Cuajimalpa, little more than twenty kilometres from the centre of the capital.

Its name refers neither to big cats nor to a desert: desierto was the term the Discalced Carmelites used for the remote places chosen for the contemplative life, and the reference to lions probably comes from the surname of some administrators of the monastery. The former monastery of Santa Fe del Carmen, built at the beginning of the seventeenth century and replaced by another in the eighteenth, is the heart of the park; its ruins, gardens, chapels scattered through the woods and underground tunnels form a historic complex open to visitors.

The forest is sacred fir (Abies religiosa), with pine, oak and alder, and performs functions critical to the capital: water capture, soil retention and air purification. That very urban proximity is its greatest threat: the atmospheric pollution of the Valley of Mexico has caused documented damage to the trees, and to this are added pests, fires and very high visitor numbers. The wildlife it preserves includes the volcano rabbit, endemic to the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, ringtails, squirrels and a temperate forest bird community.