Fire and Restoration Management Fund (FOMAFUR)


Capacity building of local organizations in fire management and restoration of affected areas.

The Project

The objective of the Fire and Restoration Management Fund (FOMAFUR, acronym in Spanish) is to finance and strengthen fire protection activities, integrated fire management, and the restoration of areas affected by fire in top priority regions for biodiversity in Mexico.

Context

Fire is one of the most widespread factors of ecological disruption and landscape transformation in the ecosystems of Mexico and the world. Fires are part of the dynamics of ecosystems and are a management tool, as well as a factor of environmental deterioration, depending on the conditions under which they occur.

In 1998, the worst fire season in Mexico occurred, reaching 14,450 fires, the highest number in history, over an area of 850,000 hectares, the second largest ever. In addition to the damage to natural resources in federal protected areas (PAs) and infrastructure, 70 people died due to a lack of technical preparation, equipment, and local organization. As a result, innovations emerged to address this problem, including the Fire Prevention and Restoration Program (PPIRA, acronym in Spanish), a public-private initiative supported by FMCN, the Government of Mexico, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United States Forest Service (USFS) and local organizations.

In 2004, through an endowment, FMCN created FOMAFUR to provide permanence to fire management activities. Through biannual calls for proposals aimed at organizations and rural and indigenous communities, FOMAFUR seeks to strengthen and implement current public policies on the conservation of Mexico’s biodiversity and forest ecosystems (General Law for Sustainable Forest Development and the Fire Management Program 2020-2024). FOMAFUR is aligned with international forest fire protection and management trends (United Nations Environment Programme – 2022; Spreading like Wildfire – The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires; A UNEP Rapid Response Assessment; Nairobi).


The lines of work that guide FOMAFUR’s actions are:

    1. Fire prevention and protection, and capacity building to implement strategies to reduce fire danger and negative impacts on PAs and their surrounding areas.
    2. Fire management to conserve and restore fire regimes and reduce negative impacts on biodiversity and its environmental services.
    3. Restoration of burned areas through the recovery of the structure and functions of affected ecosystems.

    In 2004, FMCN created FOMAFUR to give permanence to fire management activities.

    Achievements

    FOMAFUR has supported 108 projects of 54 civil and community organizations to deploy fire protection and fire management actions in 35 PAs and their areas of influence in 16 Mexican states. 

    In the first half of 2023, 11 projects were supported to support local actors in fire prevention and management. These initiatives encompass a variety of activities, including communication, group formation, and establishing coordination protocols to respond to forest fires. In particular, seven of these projects generated controlled burning plans and monitoring plots to evaluate the effects of the fire.

    In June, FMCN launched the Fomafur Call to identify and support projects to strengthen capacities related to fire protection, fire management, and the restoration of areas affected by fires. In the same month, the XII Meeting of the Fire Management Learning Community was held in the Sierra de Manantlán to expand the skills of partner organizations and government institutions in fire management, implementing planned burning, and impact monitoring. The meeting had the collaboration of the National Commission of Protected Areas, the Intermunicipal Board of the Ayuquila River, and the South University Center of the University of Guadalajara.

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    Allies

    Donor: U.S. Forest Service

    Partners:

    • Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas
    • Comisión Nacional Forestal
    • Division of Forestry Sciences at the Autonomous University of Chapingo
    • Institute of Ecosystems and Sustainability Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico
    • Manantlán Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation at the University of Guadalajara's South Coast University Center