The internecine cartel conflict that has turned large swaths of the state of Sinaloa into a war zone has taken a lasting toll on the forests in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains in northwestern Mexico.
An investigative report conducted by El Universal reporter Miriam Ramírez reveals that the infighting has caused the worst fire season in 10 years.
Para esta investigación se analizaron 7,397 incendios registrados por Conafor y más de 240 mil alertas emitidas por @globalforests en 24 municipios de la Sierra Madre Occidental. Ambas fuentes coinciden: en el 1er semestre de 2025 se rompió la tendencia de la última década. pic.twitter.com/LHEA7dZHxx
— Miriam Ramírez (@MiriamRmz86) November 30, 2025
Not only are the forests that span the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua states permeated with landmines and improvised explosive devices, but several of the fires erupted after armed clashes and drone attacks deep in the mountains.
During the first half of this year, more than 281,000 hectares of forest burned in the region, more than twice the amount that burned all of last year when 130,000 hectares were destroyed.
By early June, 62 forest fires had been recorded in Sinaloa, 15 more than had occurred during all of 2024, according to the newspaper Noroeste. At the time, only four other states had more acreage affected by fire.
Ramírez’s report analyzed official fire data from the 24 municipalities in the Sierra Madre Occidental between 2015 and June 2025 and found that all three states surpassed previous annual records during the first six months of this year.
In Chihuahua, fire damage climbed from 508 hectares in 2015 to more than 67,000 in 2025, while in Durango and Sinaloa, the damage was even greater.
Durango increased from 463 hectares of fire damage in 2015 to more than 111,000 in 2025, while Sinaloa went from 416 hectares burned to more than 102,000 in the same period.
Even more disturbing, the escalation of violence changed fire patterns.
While most forest fires are typically concentrated during the March-June dry season, fires have been reported regularly since the conflict broke out following the July 2024 arrests of two rival Sinaloa cartel leaders.
Between September 2024 and February 2025, the most intense period of the armed conflict, the number of reported fires spiked. An examination of Global Forest Watch fire alerts (fires detected by satellite imagery) showed atypical behavior, occurring during unusually cold months.
Although the fires in Sinaloa were not more numerous, they were far more destructive and the burned area grew precisely in the territories criss-crossed by clashes between the rival gangs.
Habitantes reportan incendios que iniciaron tras enfrentamientos y ataques con drones en lo profundo del bosque. La magnitud del desastre forestal contrasta con el resto del país. pic.twitter.com/F200YcviTW
— Miriam Ramírez (@MiriamRmz86) November 30, 2025
A forest fire burns in May in southern Sinaloa. Multiple fires burned that month in the mountains around the municipality of Concordia, but firefighting efforts were limited by the presence of landmines.
The 64 fires recorded in the January-June period this year, consumed more than 102,000 hectares.
The devastation was made worse by an ongoing drought in the region that has left the forests dry and vulnerable. Other contributing factors, the report indicates, are budget cuts to the National Forestry Commission (Conafor) and local governments, as well as a reduction of prevention and reforestation programs.
Local communities — destabilized economically by the warring factions — were incapable of battling the blazes even as women and children joined the firefighting efforts.
In Chihuahua, residents say armed men set fires as a strategy to displace communities and seize forest resources, especially timber, as organized crime sought ways to raise funds since some of their criminal enterprises were disrupted by the cartel civil war.
In Durango, bombs were dropped from airplanes in November as the infighting escalated and in May Governor Esteban Villegas acknowledged that the ongoing violence was directly linked to the record number of fires in his state.
With reporting from El Universal
