In the lan­guage of the Mayan peo­ples who once inhab­it­ed this region, Sian Ka‘an means ‘Ori­gin of the Sky‘. Locat­ed on the east coast of the Yucat&aacute,n penin­su­la, this bios­phere reserve con­tains trop­i­cal forests, man­groves and marsh­es, as well as a large marine sec­tion inter­sect­ed by a bar­ri­er reef. It pro­vides a habi­tat for a remark­ably rich flo­ra and a fau­na com­pris­ing more than 300 species of birds, as well as a large num­ber of the region‘s char­ac­ter­is­tic ter­res­tri­al ver­te­brates, which cohab­it in the diverse envi­ron­ment formed by its com­plex hydro­log­i­cal sys­tem.