"Guatemala tightens cattle ranching rules, but can they stop deforestation?", 15 October 2021

Guatemala is getting ready to implement new regulatory programs for the cattle industry in hopes of slowing the rate of deforestation in some of the country’s most at-risk tropical forests.

The government has invested in quarantine pens for cattle raised in Petén, a department that has struggled to prevent cattle ranching from encroaching on the 2-million-hectare (5.2-million-acre) Mayan Biosphere Reserve. The pens are being built on the border town of El Ceibo, one of the area’s only formal crossing points into Mexico, with the goal of better monitoring the thousands of cattle that are exported from Guatemala each year.

Most of Petén, especially along the border, is uninhabited forest without formal roads, making it easy for cattle ranchers operating illegally within the reserve to use hidden routes for smuggling animals into rural Mexico, where many are subsequently “laundered” into legal herds...

“The government is looking for a way to do this in a sustainable way,” said Luis Fernando Guerra, a veterinarian field coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Guatemala. “It is realizing that it’s the only way to be competitive in a world where cattle ranching has such a large environmental impact”....

“It’s well known that things are happening under the table,” Díaz said. “But the idea is to at least regulate the country’s exports”...