Whale Deal/Independent -UK

THE INDEPENDENT-UK

Down in Mexico: The deal that saved the whale

Developers are destroying vast areas of Baja California, the remote region
of Mexico where grey whales go to breed every autumn. Now an agreement has
been struck that could head off disaster

By Leonard Doyle
Published: 14 March 2006

Every winter, somewhere along the coast of Baja California, a pod of
pregnant grey whales cruises past the US-Mexican border, swimming south,
well offshore from the grim, polluted cities of Tijuana and El Rosario and
the untreated sewage that pours into the ocean. The whales continue their
extraordinary 6,000-mile migration from the frozen Arctic south, down the
Baja peninsula. And it is there that they face their greatest threat - an
economic boom comparable to the great Californian land rush of 100 years
ago.

Geographically, Baja California is the longest and narrowest peninsula on
earth, and this remote area of Mexico offers a precious refuge for the grey
whale. Although among the first whales to be removed from the endangered
species list, there are only 18,000 greys left in the wild and their future
is by no means certain. The filter-feeding whales, measuring up to 45 feet
(15 metres) long and weighing some 30 tons, spend the summer feeding in the
plankton-rich waters of the Bering and Chuckchi Seas and winter in the warm
lagoons off Baja California, where their calves are born.

But the race is on to develop Baja California. It is hoped that industry and
holiday enclaves will help end the grinding poverty that causes so many
Mexicans to flee for El Norte. But there are well-grounded fears that
development will also diminish and ultimately destroy a delicate ecosystem
of desert and coastal ecosystem and with it the breeding and feeding grounds
of turtles, dolphins and grey whales.

Once past the US-Mexican border, the whales head 600 miles further south
until they reach Laguna San Ignacio. This is one of Mexico's most remote
regions, a vast landscape of water and desert where migratory birds feed,
mangroves thrive and the once endangered whales migrate to breed and bear
their young. Laguna San Ignacio first became a successful 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 by
Mitsubishi Corporation.

The salt works would have irreversibly altered the ecology of the lagoon as
has happened else on the coast of Baja in at least two other similar
locations. They were blocked, and in 2003, the lagoon and another grey whale
breeding site, Laguna Ojo de Liebre, were designated United Nations World
Heritage sites. Then the property speculators started to move in, triggering
another battle to save the lagoon.

However, a highly unusual agreement has just been negotiated between
environmental groups and a local cooperative, which means that this vital
stretch of water, the last undisturbed grey whale nursery along the vast
Pacific coastline, is to be spared from industrial development and land
speculation. For the first time, local residents have called a halt to land
speculation along the sparsely settled and biologically wealthy stretch of
the Baja California peninsula.

Protected from the pounding surf of the Pacific by sandbars, Laguna San
Ignacio, surrounded by salt flats, mesas and desert, has been a sanctuary
for grey whales for centuries. The pod of pregnant whales enters the lagoon
through a narrow inlet and move onwards for almost ten miles to a warm,
shallow, isolated sector of the Middle Lagoon to give birth.

The newborn whales are dark and pinkish -and at birth are already 15 feet
long and weigh almost a ton. Within moments of birth, the calf swims to the
surface to take its first breath, its flippers and flukes still flaccid and
crumpled from being folded for 12 months inside the mother whale. Once the
young are born, the whales mate again, their vast barnacle-encrusted fins
slapping the shallow water as they frolic, breaching and flopping their
giant bodies. "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.

Local fishermen, who work as eco-tourist guides while the whales
over-winter, bring tourists to the middle of the lagoon to watch the
so-called friendly whales play around the boats. The whales are so
approachable that visitors can pet and scratch their blubbery, sensitive
tongues - although this is severely frowned upon by conservation
authorities.

But while the lagooon may be safe, environmentalists worry that a massive
development programme at Loreto, just four hours away, will pose yet more
danger to the fragile ecosystem.

Mostly scrub desert, Baja stretches for more than 800 miles. It is no more
than 60 miles across at any given point. The Pacific runs from Tijuana down
to the resort town of Cabo San Lucas. And to the east, between the peninsula
and the mainland of Mexico, flows the Gulf of California, or Sea of Cortés.

Up and down this finger of land, speculators from the US and Canada are busy
offering huge amounts of money to subsistence farmers and fishermen to buy
up vast tracts for development of the most unspoilt and rich coastal
habitats in the world.

"A speculator comes in and offers $25,000 or more for a plot of land that
was worthless a few years ago," said Dr William Megill an expert on the
region's environment from the University of Bath. "All too often the social
consequences are disastrous, with money being drunk away and the land
ownership changing."

Desert mesas and endless beaches best known to a band of adventurous surfers
and ecologists are now in the process of being sold off to be turned into
developments of villas and condominiums for North American holidaymakers.
The development underway outside the once small town of Loreto is expected
to rival Cancun with all its brash garishness and will house some 35,000
visitors and the obligatory cluster of golf courses.

"When villas are on sale for half a million dollars, it is easy to bring in
water desalination plants and suddenly the entire desert ecosystem is
threatened by sewage and waste runoff," said Dr Megill.

The move to protect the whale nursery at Laguna San Ignacio has brought some
rare cheer to environmentalists like Dr Megill who receives funding from the
charity Earthwatch to study grey whales both in Mexico during winter and off
British Columbia in the late summer.

Under the deal, the cooperative, known as the Ejido Luis Echeverría, has
agreed in perpetuity to protect 120,000 acres around the lagoon from
development, in return for a $675,000 trust fund put together by several
groups, among them Wildcoast and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Earnings from the trust will go to the cooperative to be invested in
sustainable development projects to create long term jobs and give its 43
members a stake in protecting the habitat of the whales. "This is a
long-term project, a project for perpetuity," said the president of the
cooperative, Raúl López. "We have to be an example for the other
cooperatives."

The agreement involves the largest piece of property to be placed in a
private land trust in Mexico. 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, whose members subsist through fishing and ecotourism. "Maybe
we can set a precedent for conservation in the region."

In exchange for blocking development, the Ejido Luis Echeverría will in
perpetuity receive $25,000 a year from a trust fund. ProNatura, Mexico's
oldest and largest conservation group, will ensure the money is spent only
on environmentally sustainable development projects.

Nearly to 80 per cent 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 privatisation 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.

A coalition called the Laguna San Ignacio Conservation Alliance has now been
established amid hopes that five other ejidos could be persuaded to sign
similar agreements, and that eventually one 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 Miguel
Àngel Vargas, who runs ProNatura. "I don't think we could save these areas
without such agreements. What we're doing is taking preventive measures."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article351119.ece

Photos courtesy of Adriana Zehbrauskas
Photographer
www.azpix.com.br