Drafting
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, November 6, 2025, p. 20
On the eve of the Christmas season, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) began the 2025 Christmas Tree Import Verification and Inspection Operation, to prevent the entry of exotic forest pests that could affect the country’s ecosystems.
From November 5 to December 5, trees from the United States will be inspected. There will be special checkpoints on the borders of Tijuana and Mexicali, Baja California; Piedras Negras, Coahuila; Zaragoza, Chihuahua; Colombia, Nuevo León; San Luis Río Colorado and Nogales, Sonora; Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, from the United States.
The verifications will be carried out through visual inspections, targeted sampling and laboratory analysis, in order to detect the possible presence of quarantine pests or diseases in the trees. If risk organisms are found, the specimens will be retained or returned to their country of origin, in accordance with the technical opinions issued by the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat).
This operation complies with the provisions of the official Mexican standard NOM-013-Semarnat-2020, which establishes phytosanitary measures for the importation of natural trees of the genus pine (pine) and Abies (fir trees), as well as the species Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas fir).
Profepa highlighted the relevance of this operation, since Mexico is one of the centers of greatest diversification of pine species, so the entry of an exotic pest (particularly of quarantine importance) would have serious ecological repercussions on ecosystem health and economic repercussions on the value chains associated with the forestry and agricultural sector. In 2024, 567,330 trees imported from the United States were verified.
