Logging, murder and money: can Mexico’s ancient forests be saved from the cartels?

An illegally logged hillside in Bocoyna, in the Sierra Tarahumara’s temperate forests – home to black bears, golden eagles and rare conifers. Deforested areas are often burned so they can be classified as fire damage rather than illegal logging, erasing evidence of the crime. All photographs by Euan Wallace/The Guardian Photograph: Euan Wallace/Guardian

Decades ago, the children of Rochéachi village in the Sierra Tarahumara – pine-covered mountains of north-west Mexico’s Chihuahua state – would run through the forest by night. In the rainy season, they would collect fireflies whose glimmering light would flicker through the hollows of the pine trees.

“We had peace. We used to walk and play and be together,” says a woman, who asked to remain anonymous, about the forest she once knew. “Now, children can’t go out to play. We don’t know what might happen.”