Cañón del Río Blanco National Park is protected natural area in

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

Veracruz Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Political divisions of Mexico, Federal Entit ...

state.

Geography

Cañón del Río Blanco National Park covers an area of 488 km². The park includes the upper watershed of the Río Blanco, where the river has carved a canyon through the

Sierra Madre de Oaxaca The Sierra Madre de Oaxaca is a mountain range in southeastern Mexico. It is primarily in the state of Oaxaca, and extends north into the states of Puebla and Veracruz. Geography The mountain range begins at Pico de Orizaba, and extends in a sout ...

, plunging over rapids and waterfalls as it descends from the mountains towards the

Gulf Coastal Plain The Gulf Coastal Plain extends around the Gulf of Mexico in the Southern United States and eastern Mexico. This coastal plain reaches from the Florida Panhandle, southwest Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, the southern two-thirds of Alabama, over m ...

to empty into the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

. The park is in the Sierra de Zongolica, the northern sub-range of the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca.

Pico de Orizaba Citlaltépetl (from Nahuan languages, Náhuatl = star, and = mountain), otherwise known as Pico de Orizaba, is an active volcano, the highest mountain in Mexico and Table of the highest major summits of North America, third highest in North Ame ...

, a volcano the

Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt (), also known as the Transvolcanic Belt and locally as the (''Snowy Mountain Range''), is an active volcanic belt that covers central-southern Mexico. Several of its highest peaks have snow all year long, and dur ...

and Mexico's highest peak, lies several kilometers north of the park.

Flora and fauna

Plant communities in the park include pine forest, oak forest, montane moist evergreen forest, and evergreen rain forest."Cañón del Río Blanco". Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas, Government of Mexico. Accessed 9 October 2021

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Conservation

Cañón del Río Blanco was decreed a national park in 1938 by president

Lázaro Cárdenas Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (; 21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was a Mexican army officer and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. Previously, he served as a general in the Constitutional Army during the Mexican Revo ...

References

{{Reflist National parks of Mexico Protected areas of Veracruz Petén–Veracruz moist forests Sierra Madre de Oaxaca Cloud forests of Mexico