The total National Park land in Mexico is almost equal in size to Belgium and the Netherlands. These are conservation areas, protected by law from being developed or built-on. Some are areas of natural beauty and others are places where rare animals live or breed.

Human activities and changes made to the natural environment have threatened some of Mexico's rarer species, almost to the point of extinction. This is partly due to hunting and partly to the destruction of the species' habitat (or sometimes because of chemical pollution).

The human impact on the environment has been enormous, and the country has a list of environmental problems as long as the china wall; these problems threaten not only the fauna and flora but the people too.

Mexico's environment crises are typical for a developing country with an exploding population. From early in the 20th century, urban industrial growth, intensive chemical based agriculture, and the destruction of forest for legging, grazing and development were seen as paths toward prosperity, and scant attention was paid to the environmental effects of these actions.

Mexico's most infamous environmental problem is the pollution from traffic and industry, which chokes the air of Mexico's ever-growing cities, above all the capital, where it brings residents as host of health problems.