Semarnat Weighs Clearing Tulum Jungle for 158-Space Parking Lot

Tulum, Quintana Roo — Mexico’s Environment and Natural Resources Department (Semarnat) is weighing whether to authorize the clearing of 8,665 square meters of jungle in Tulum for a 158-space tourist parking lot, a project promoted by the military-run company GAFSACOMM (Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexos, Olmeca-Maya-Mexica). Activists and experts are urging officials to reject the construction, warning it would damage the local ecosystem.

The application, filed to serve the Parque del Jaguar, prompted the citizens’ group Sélvame del Tren to demand that federal authorities halt the project. The environmental organization says the work has no ecological justification and poses a critical threat to the region’s remaining forest.

“Semarnat should definitely deny such a permit,” said Guillermo D’Christy, president of Sélvame del Tren. He argued there is no justification for continuing to strip away forest cover.

“There is no way to justify continuing to clear jungle for a project that, like all of the military’s projects, has been a failure,” D’Christy said. “Beyond the weight of the cars, the most important issue is preserving the vegetation cover, which is shrinking by leaps and bounds every day.”

Semarnat did not respond to a request for comment on the project.

A project inside a federally protected area

Aarón Siller, southeast regional director of the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA), said the organization will ask authorities in the coming days to hold a public consultation on the proposal. He stressed that the work is planned inside a federally protected natural area.

“What is clearly wrong is that it sets out a series of activities that contravene the management program for this preservation area,” Siller said.

He noted that commercial activity is not permitted in this subzone, meaning a paid parking lot would be prohibited, and that disturbing or destroying wildlife feeding, nesting, breeding or shelter sites is also barred.

“It is a well-conserved jungle area where different species take refuge, nest and feed,” Siller said. “Opening and widening trails and roads would also violate the rules. And the most serious issue is the change of land use: the land is forested, and they would turn it into a concrete slab, eliminating the forest cover. So they would be violating the management program; legally it is unviable. Semarnat should automatically reject the project. Unfortunately, it would not surprise us if they accepted it, as they have with other works such as the Maya Train, which in some stretches contravenes land-use rules, and the Cancún Multimodal Terminal, which was approved anyway.”

The project, which would affect low semi-deciduous and semi-evergreen jungle ecosystems, was submitted on Oct. 30, 2026, under file number 23QR2026U0072. It calls for 146 standard spaces, seven for people with disabilities and five for passenger buses at the southern entrance to the Parque del Jaguar.

Karst soil and aquifer risks

Critics also point to the fragility of the karst soil typical of the Tulum area, which is highly porous and connected to the underground aquifer. The weight of buses and hydrocarbons would pose a risk of collapse and contamination of the water table, they say.

“I think it is clear that Tulum has a tourism crisis, both from the arrival of visitors that strains the industry and from the perspective of locals’ access to the beach,” Siller said. “We should ask what the intention behind this parking lot is — whether it is to keep prioritizing fees and rising visit costs and to keep blocking local residents from the beaches.”

According to a technical report on deforestation from 2019 to 2023 in the Yucatan Peninsula by the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS), Quintana Roo lost 58,319 hectares of forest in that period, at an average of 14,595 hectares a year, driven by urban growth and tourism developments along the northern coast.

The Environmental Protection Prosecutor’s Office (PPA) has opened about 430 files this year against irregular projects, concentrated in Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum. Several of those cases have had to be referred to federal authorities because of direct encroachment on national ecosystems.