Conservation Deal Preserves San Ignacio Lagoon

CONSERVATION DEAL PRESERVES LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO

WiLDCOAST, Pronatura-Noroeste, International Community Foundation, and NRDC Help Establish Largest Conservation Reserve of its Kind in Mexico with the Ejido Luis Echeverria to Preserve 140,000-acres at Laguna San Ignacio.

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SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

Owners to limit growth at oasis

Baja deal would mark an unusual alliance

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051022/news_1n22save.html

By Sandra Dibble
STAFF WRITER

October 22, 2005

It is one of Mexico's most remote regions, a vast landscape of water
and earth where migratory birds feed, mangroves thrive and gray whales
migrate to breed and bear their young. For years, conservation groups
from both sides of the border have fought to preserve the Laguna San
Ignacio and its surroundings.

For the first time, local residents also are having a say about this
sparsely settled and biologically wealthy stretch of the Baja
California peninsula.

Next week, leaders of the 43-member communal landholding group Ejido
Luis Echeverría are expected to limit development on more than
four-fifths of their property – almost 120,000 acres along the lagoon.

The legally binding arrangement, scheduled to be signed Tuesday in
Tijuana, marks an unusual marriage of U.S. and Mexican conservationists
with local landholders in a region where jobs are few and development
pressures have been growing. With scarce Mexican government resources
for conservation, the Baja California peninsula has become a key
testing ground for such private efforts.

The agreement involves the largest piece of property to be placed in a
private land trust in Mexico since the concept became legally feasible
in 1996. It is one of very few such arrangements involving an ejido, a
form of communal landholding created under Mexico's 1917 Constitution
to distribute property among landless Mexicans.

"Everyone in Baja California Sur is thinking about selling their land,
but we're going to show that you don't necessarily have to sell," said
Raúl López Góngora, president of Ejido Luis Echeverría, whose members
subsist through fishing and ecotourism. "Maybe we can set a precedent
for conservation in the region."

In exchange for limiting development, Ejido Luis Echeverría will
receive $25,000 a year in perpetuity from a trust fund established
through the San Diego-based International Community Foundation. Staff
from Pronatura, Mexico's oldest and largest conservation group, will
monitor how the money is spent, ensuring that it is used for
environmentally sustainable development projects. In a separate
agreement expected later this year, members also would split a one-time
payment of $545,000 to preserve the remaining 20,000 acres they hold as
individual parcels.

Close to 80 percent of the Baja California peninsula is in the hands of
ejidos, and conserving coastal lands depends on securing their
cooperation. For decades, ejido  property could be neither bought nor
sold. But changes in the 1990s allowed for the privatization and sale
of the communal property. Land rich but cash poor, growing numbers of
ejido  members are opting to sell their parcels, and the buyers are
often developers and land speculators.

Laguna San Ignacio has been a case in point. The region first became a
rallying point for environmental groups from both sides of the border
in the mid-1990s when salt evaporation ponds were proposed for the
shores of the lagoon. Conservationists feared this would greatly damage
the ecosystem.

"It is one of the great wildlife experiences anywhere in the northern
hemisphere to go to this lagoon and interact with the whales at close
range," said Joel Reynolds, director of the mammal protection program
of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The New York-based group played an active role in opposing the salt
project, and has raised $1.5 million for the creation of the
conservation easement, or private trust, with Ejido Luis Echeverría.

Although private easements are common conservation tools in the United
States and other parts of the world, they are a relatively recent
phenomenon in Mexico. Farther north on the Baja California peninsula,
Pronatura has negotiated easements protecting 2,500 acres along the
Gulf of California near Bahia de los Angeles, but these involve far
smaller pieces of property, all of them individually held ejido 
parcels that did not involve negotiation with the entire land-holding
group.

Given the growing development pressures along the Baja California
peninsula, "I don't think we could save these areas" without such
agreements, said Miguel Àngel Vargas of Pronatura. "What we're doing is
taking preventive measures."

The Ejido Luis Echeverría is now part of a binational coalition called
the Laguna San Ignacio Conservation Alliance. The group is hoping that
five other ejidos  could be persuaded to sign similar agreements, and
that eventually 1 million acres would be protected in private trusts.

"The idea is that the community itself decides, 'This is what we want
for the future, and this is how we can best use our resources,' " said
Vargas, who is in charge of private conservation programs in northwest
Mexico for Pronatura. "We're hoping for a domino effect."

The agreement will be registered with Mexico's National Agrarian
Registry, which keeps track of ejido  lands; but otherwise, there is no
direct government involvement. If the property is sold, the
restrictions would still apply, say Pronatura attorneys. If the ejido
fails to live up to its commitment, the money could stop coming and the
group would face civil legal action.

Persuading the remaining ejidos  to follow the same course could be a
struggle and require more than $8 million. "In ejidos  that don't have
vision for the future, that don't see opportunities, the only option
they see is selling their land," López said.

Serge Dedina, director of the Imperial Beach-based conservation group
Wildcoast, has spent years studying the whales at Laguna San Ignacio
and worked closely with the members of Ejido Luis Echeverría.

"They are some of the most ardent conservationists of Mexico," said
Dedina, whose group worked to bring together the members of the
Conservation Alliance. "We're empowering local people to become
stewards of their own land."

Although a broad range of wildlife thrives in the region, the gray
whale has been the central focus of past conservation campaigns. The
mammals can measure more than 40 feet and weigh more than 40 tons,
traveling more than 6,000 miles every year between their feeding
grounds in the Arctic Ocean to three warm-water lagoons on the Baja
California coast, of which Laguna San Ignacio is the smallest and least
disturbed.

Efforts to protect Laguna San Ignacio began in the 1970s, when the
Mexican government declared the lagoon a wildlife refuge. In 1988, the
government established the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve, a 6.2-million
acre expanse three times the size of Yellowstone National Park, along a
heavily traveled route for migratory birds. The reserve, which includes
the lagoon and its shores, establishes strict protections for certain
core areas, but the rules do not prevent development in the "buffer
zones."

The designation did not stop the Mitsubishi Corp. in partnership with
the Mexican government from proposing the salt manufacturing plant on
the shores of San Ignacio in the mid-1990s.

Although the Baja California Sur government supported the project,
saying it would created much-needed jobs in the region, the proposal
generated widespread opposition from conservation groups who waged a
lengthy and costly campaign against it. Then-President Ernesto Zedillo
canceled the project in March 2000.

In 2003, the lagoon and another gray whale breeding site, Laguna Ojo de
Liebre, were designated United Nations World Heritage sites.

Members of Ejido Luis Echeverría, who staunchly opposed the salt
project, say their greatest concern was maintaining their fishing
grounds, but since the campaign to defeat the salt plant, their whale
watching business has picked up considerably.

Now, with the new revenue, ejido  members are planning to expand their
economic activities with small-scale projects such as oyster farms and
chicken farms, and training women in crafts projects.

Jorge Urban, head of marine mammal research at the Autonomous
University of Baja California Sur in La Paz, applauds the arrangement.

"It worries me when there's talk about conservation and protecting the
whales and the people who live in the area are not taken into account,"
Urban said. "This seems excellent, because . . . you're benefiting the
local communities."

López, the ejido  president, hopes the easement would not only protect
the region, but prove a point: "If we're successful, we can show people
that it's possible to get ahead with your own efforts, without asking
for help."