Jungle Lots Sold in Quintana Roo Amid Maya Train Fallout

QUINTANA ROO — Since the Maya Train began operations in 2023, an estimated two thousand hectares of jungle have been devastated in areas between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, with some impact also felt in Cancún, according to an environmental specialist. José Urbina Bravo, a member of the organization Sélvame del Tren, a cave diver, and a diving instructor in Playa del Carmen, issued the warning.

Urbina Bravo stated that the damage across the Yucatán Peninsula, particularly in the Riviera Maya and Cancún, has been exacerbated by developers who only assign value to the jungle when it can be sold. He argued they are incapable of recognizing that a living jungle is what gives the region its wealth and that protecting it, learning to build and develop sustainably, is how this wealth multiplies.

He recalled that the train could have been built alongside the existing highway, repairing past damage, as Federal Highway 307 is obsolete. This would have utilized already impacted zones.

"Instead of doing this, they went 5 to 7 kilometers into the jungle," said José Urbina Bravo. "Just in section five, which is 120 kilometers long between Cancún and Tulum and 60 to 90 meters wide, over 1,000 hectares were devastated in the rail corridor alone. If you do the math, it's more than 1,000 hectares."

Beyond the rail line itself, access roads had to be opened to reach material banks. These roads are now being used by developers to sell off the jungle, as evidenced by social media advertisements calling for the purchase of land near the Maya Train to "live in the jungle." Urbina Bravo contended that none of this would have happened if the jungle had been protected and already impacted zones had been repaired and utilized.

"What are the consequences? Well, of course, the deforestation of trees," he said. "We estimate the density of the jungle is between 6,000 and 8,000 trees per hectare, not counting fungi and other types of vegetation—what is considered a tree. In section five alone, practically some 8 million trees were devastated. Add to this all these adjacent roads, and now there are invasions that take advantage of this situation to enter, burn the jungle, and start to subdivide it into lots to see if at some point a development or something similar can be sold. The situation is critical."

The importance of this zone for biodiversity is extraordinary, Urbina Bravo emphasized, not only for its beauty but because between the coast and the Holbox fault line—a distance of some 20 to 25 kilometers—all the subterranean rivers that form the aquifer are created.

"This aquifer must be protected; it is unique. All the water that nourishes life in the zone comes from there—for tourists, inhabitants, fauna, and vegetation—and we are destroying it," he warned. "We are destroying the jungle that produces this water, and we are contaminating it, expanding the contamination into the aquifer."