Tsunul Reserve — Planet Healers

Tsunul is a 39-hectare tropical dry forest reserve on shallow limestone — tzekel — in Molas, south of Mérida, Yucatán. The land was cattle pasture for generations. We are returning it to forest.

This is slow, specific work. We restore by reading the ground we actually have — the thin carbonate soils, the six-month dry season, the native species that can take hold here — rather than by importing methods built for other places.  A native-plant nursery, a food forest, biochar and soil work, and a collection of local species support the restoration.

Tsunul is the field ground for Planet Healers, where we teach ecological restoration to practitioners around the world. The site is a certified Ecosystem Restoration Community and the home of the Planet Healers practitioner curriculum, drawn from the Introduction to Ecosystem Restoration course and the Fundamentals of Ecosystem Restoration text.

We host a small number of apprentices, interns and practitioners who want to learn restoration by doing it — at first light, with their hands in the work — and who are drawn to the quieter side of this practice: attention, patience, and an honest reckoning with both what can be healed and what cannot.

There is a cenote where we swim, Maya features in the forest, and a daily rhythm built around early fieldwork and contemplative practice.

Education / Research / Action triad

Tsunul brings together learning, restoration and research.

Learning — hands-on training in ecological restoration, soil regeneration and tropical dry forest ecology, grounded in the Planet Healers curriculum.

Restoration — returning degraded pasture to functioning forest through nucleation planting, native-species propagation, and soil and water work.

Research — a working collaboration with regional scientists on what restoration looks like on Yucatán's karst, benchmarked against old-growth reference forest at Calakmul.

Intern/apprentice offering

We host apprentices and interns who want to learn restoration on the ground. Days begin at first light in the field; midday is for rest and the cenote; afternoons are for methodology, the nursery, and site projects. Accommodation is simple — camping or the casita — with running water, a solar and wind system, a composting toilet, and a propane and wood kitchen. We shop weekly in town. The work is real and the pace is the land's, not ours.

Stays, dates and contributions are arranged individually. See planethealers.org for current openings and how to apply.

We have partnered with the Ecosystem Restoration Camp movement! 

Join us as we learn how to restore ecosystems and heal the planet.

https://ecosystemrestorationcommunities.org/community/resilient-ecosystems-institute-mexico/

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Let's do this great work of our time! 

Videos on eco techniques on our YouTube Channel

Link to a video on the internship that we did with our first NuMundo visitor! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loKMSfy9zcs&feature=youtu.be

Photos (below):

Light on the Cenote we swim in!

Meditating on the road into the property

Our Windmill pumps our water from the ground

Our nursery is where we grow trees for planting in projects and vegetables for the garden.

Seed collected for habitat restoration projects