Residents Battle Armed Gangs of Illegal Loggers On Own

Desperate residents in Cheran, a small town of 17,000 in the mountains of western Mexico, are fed up with violence related to illegal logging and taking matters into their own hands, reports news service AFP. They say that armed groups are protecting illegal loggers and spreading terror, and that government forces have failed to respond, so three weeks ago they blocked access to the town with stones and bonfires to try to keep out the armed groups. Yet two neighbors were shot dead by illegal loggers on April 27. An estimated 20,000 acres of local forest have been destroyed in around six months; the forests in the region are famous as a stop for millions of migrating monarch butterflies.