A growing effort to help a fire-scarred mountainside above Lake Atitlán heal — through regeneration, stewardship, and co-creation.
Above the northern shores of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, rises a dry mountainside of grass hills and scattered trees. The slopes above Santa Catarina Palopó extend upward toward the forests near San Andrés Semetabaj.
This landscape is beautiful, but fragile. Every year during the dry season, fires sweep across these hills.
Each dry season, fires often begin on the lower slopes above Santa Catarina Palopó and climb upward across the mountainside. These fires burn through dry grasslands, destroy young trees, and set back ecological recovery year after year. Local fire brigades work tirelessly to contain them, often risking their safety.
Despite recurring fires, the land still holds extraordinary regenerative potential. Dry grass hills can gradually transition into resilient forests that:
Montaña Viva begins with a simple belief:
This mountain can heal.
But regeneration does not happen automatically. It happens when people choose to become stewards of the land.
Montaña Viva is an emerging effort to help this mountainside heal. Beginning with a small network of stewards currently caring for 10 hectares of land, the initiative seeks to align neighbors, regenerative practitioners, researchers, institutions and citizens around a shared vision for the mountain.
By bringing life back to the mountain, we protect the watershed, sequester carbon, and create a resilient ecosystem that thrives in harmony with the local communities of Lake Atitlán.
Regenerating a mountain requires long-term care and diverse strategies. Montaña Viva explores approaches such as:
Reintroducing diverse native species and allowing natural forest succession to recover.
Designing landscapes that reduce wildfire risk through vegetation management and ecological planning.
Practices such as composting, microbial soil restoration, and biochar.
In selected areas, tropical agroforestry and syntropic practices that regenerate soil while producing food.
Training, research, and collaborative learning to support long-term care of the land.
Montaña Viva serves as a living laboratory — a place where landscapes, people, and knowledge evolve together.
Here, traditional ecological wisdom meets modern regenerative design, not only to restore forests and soil, but to cultivate the relationships that allow landscapes to thrive.
Students, researchers, local stewards, and curious visitors are invited to witness how regeneration unfolds when ecological processes, human collaboration, and long-term stewardship begin to align.
Montaña Viva is a space where living systems — ecological, cultural, and human — learn to grow and regenerate together.
Healing a mountain takes many hands and a long view. Montaña Viva is taking its first steps, and we are gathering the people who want to walk with it. Becoming a steward today means joining that first circle: you will hear how the mountain is doing, and you will be the first to know when there are concrete ways to help, from hands on the land to skills and resources.
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