Integrating Social Lag, Environmental Quality, and Local Ecological Knowledge in the Monarch Butterfly Natural Landscape Protected Area, Tamaulipas, Mexico

Newly designated protected areas require integrated territorial and community baselines. We characterized the Monarch Butterfly Natural Landscape Protected Area (PNMM), Tamaulipas, Mexico, by combining 2020 Environmental Quality Index (EQI) and Social Lag Index (SLI) classifications for 101 comparable localities (45,352 inhabitants) with 131 semi-structured interviews associated with 50 localities and 22 participatory mapping exercises (72 participants). The indices were examined separately and in a 5 × 5 ordinal cross-tabulation. Under the primary simultaneous-severity criterion (Rule C), 15 localities (1384 inhabitants) had unfavorable conditions in both indices; an exploratory additive criterion (Rule B) identified 23 localities (3218 inhabitants). Preservation showed the highest proportional occurrence of Rule C (4 of 7 comparable localities; 57.1%), although the small denominator limits inference. Of the 131 interviewees, 89 (67.9%) were aged 51 years or older, reflecting this non-probability sample rather than the PNMM population. Interviewees prioritized productive initiatives, training, livelihoods, basic services, and resource governance. Census locality points provided spatial context, not exact fieldwork locations. Because the 2020 indices predate the 2022 designation, the analysis establishes neither causal effects nor a validated composite index.