Mezcal Boom and Extinction Debts

Abstract

In recent years, national and international demand for mezcal has exponentially increased, promoting deforestation and the overexploitation of agave and firewood species from Mexican plant communities at a rate never seen. In this chapter, we present evidence that the impacts of such overexploitation, conducted mainly in Mexican arid ecosystems, will affect ecological interactions leading to the loss of biotic and cultural diversity. We do so by integrating the results of studies on cooperative interactions between plant species (facilitation), pollination, and seed dispersal studies, which explain how multiple ecosystems could collapse. Although interdependence of different ecological networks is indicative of ecosystem fragility and low resilience, these studies are central to closing the gap between ecology and conservation biology. Consequently, the goal of this chapter focuses on showing the importance of realistically modeling the interrelationship between species using a network approach that allows obtaining early indicators of deterioration where the loss of interactions usually precedes the loss of species.