Wildlife in the Yucatán
Yucatán Bird Festival - Yucatán Today
The 6th Annual Bird Festival of Yucatan Toh 2007 is an important yearly event for both the local people and our tourist guests. It is a clear example of what can be done when the three levels of government work together with the private sector, the civil organizations and the Mayan communities. The dates of this years events are from Friday, November 29th to Sunday, December 2nd. The sites of this everyday more popular event are Merida and Izamal. In the birdwatchers world, birders from the US and Mexico await this festival as the Yucatán is every birdwatchers dream come true...
Birding in the Yucatán - Mundo Maya
There are 400 bird species within the ten million square kilometers encompassed by the European continent; yet Mundo Maya-an area 20 times smaller-harbors 700. Few regions of the planet have as many bird species as Mundo Maya, a territory running roughly from the Gulf Coast of Tabasco, México, through the Yucatán Peninsula and all the way down to Honduras. Over sixty-percent of Mundo Maya's bird species are permanent residents; the rest are migratory, heading north to summer in the United States and Canada. Some make short stops in the region as they travel between North and South America; others simply choose to linger around the Caribbean. Strangely, few bird species are exclusive to the region...
Plants, Animals & Ecology of the Northern Yucatan Peninsula - Jim Conrad
The Yucatan is a geological PENINSULA, but it is an ecological ISLAND. It's isolated from other land toward the north, east and west by the sea, and to the south it's isolated from the rest of Mexico by this climatological fact: The Yucatan is much more arid than that part of Mexico adjoining it toward the south.
The Yucatan, then, is an ecological island of aridity, and Darwin's experiences in the Galapagos reminds us that on islands unique species tend to evolve. That's the case with the Yucatan.
When a biologist says that an organism is endemic to a certain area, he or she means that in the whole world that thing is found only in that limited area. A surprising number of organisms are endemic to the Yucatan.
Nearly 10% of the Yucatan's plant species are endemics. The Yucatan is home to 14 endemic cactus species, and here in the northern Yucatan -- the most arid part of the arid island -- we are home to ten of them...