This issue has just three articles and each is dedicated to community management of natural resources in biologically and culturally rich Oaxaca, Mexico. Effective biodiversity conservation is taking place in this state despite the scarcity of officially protected areas or government policies.

Salvador Anta Fonseca and Leticia Merino's article, Community Management of Natural Resources in Oaxaca, provides an introduction and background to the statewide phenomenon of voluntary conservation of biodiversity. Facts and statistics about Oaxaca's superlative biocultural diversity are followed by a description of sustainable land management processes and initiatives undertaken by indigenous communities throughout the state, e.g., forest management programs, Forest Stewardship Council certification, community protected areas, wildlife management units, community land use planning and organic coffee production. Twelve percent of Oaxacan land is considered to be under sustainable management, which is attributed to good local organization, institutional arrangements and collective land rights. Nevertheless, the authors point to the poor integration of current environmental, land tenure, agro-fishery and forest policies as well as problems in the national agrarian sector as limitions to the expansion of community-based conservation initiatives.

The article, Community-based Forest Management in Oaxaca, by Ricardo Ramírez Domínguez describes six varieties of enterprises centered on sustainable resource use that have developed over the past twenty years in the Sierra Norte and Sierra Sur. These schemes include sustainable commercial timber production and forest certification, harvesting of pine resin, commercial bottling of spring water, community-based ecotourism, mushroom cultivation, and orchid and bromeliad cultivation. Various benefits of these projects include biodiversity conservation, increases in community standards of living, local valuation of forests previously considered of little use, employment opportunities for women, strengthening of community social capital and governance, revival of traditional knowledge, and technical capacity building of local people. The author concludes that these schemes are based not only on conservation and economic advancement, but also on equitable benefit sharing and cultural survival.

Community-based Biological Diversity Management Strategies: The experience of Santa María Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico by Marco Antonio González Ortiz, outlines a story in the coastal dry tropics of 13 communal protected areas that complement the conservation measures of a neighboring official national park. The communities avoided inclusion in the national park because of a preference to continue their traditional environmental management and governance practices. The author's Oaxacan NGO, Grupo Autónomo para la Investigación Ambiental, A.C. (GAIA), has supported the co-existence of the park and surrounding communities through various schemes, including territorial mapping and zoning, an administrative and governance system, and local institution strengthening. These communities together are conserving 30% more land than the national park, and the trend for participation has been spreading to other communities in the area under a conservation initiative called Sistema Comunitario para la Biodiversidad.

Prepared by Megan Glore