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Sunset on the San Ignacio Lagoon. "The community should decide" is the philosophy of the new Alliance. Photo: Miguel Ángel Torres.
In the construction of a framework for forging a socially acceptable and politically viable style of growth that respects natural resources and guarantees their rational use and their preservation for future generations, innumerable forces converge. Sometimes these forces are at odds with each other. They come from the federal, state, and municipal governments, from national and foreign investors, from academia, and from civil society organizations..
In this context, the Baja California peninsula is a true laboratory providing multiple examples of the mosaic of challenges and the richness of the cutting edge proposals to resolve them. In the central part of this exceptional region, the Reserva de la Biosfera del Vizcaíno constitutes a true microcosm, unique in the world, like other areas in the Mar de Cortés region of which it forms part..
But what to do with a territory like this, that broadly speaking presents varied obstacles to the promotion of "ecotourism"? Its topographical characteristics are wilderness-like, it is very far from the continental mass and from the urban centers of Baja California Sur; political organization is null and social organization revolves around ejidos (rural collective farming communities) and cooperatives, complex figures and generators of distrust toward private investment or public support. And this is, paradoxically, part of its richness.
In the Reserve, one can enjoy, among many other attractions, the countryside, and get to know deserts with great vegetative and animal diversity, fantastic age-old rock painting, oases that are a relief to the eye of the visitor, opportunities to view the ancestral journey of the grey whale—that reproduces and conceives only in these lagoons—migratory birds that find refuge here, and Jesuit missions, almost intact, that served to colonize the local ethnicities on the arrival of the Spanish..
In the Santa Martha mountain range shares with the neighboring San Francisco range the prestige of being among the top five rock painting sites in the world, which has earned them a place in the list of World Heritage Sites
The marine mammals that travel the two coasts and the lagoons of the Reserve find protection, refuge, and food, as well as pristine conditions that make possible increased opportunities for the gray whale to mate and give birth. The gray whale is under special protection. The most recent census reports populations of at least 2,500 gray whales in the Reserve zone.
The coasts, the lagoons, and the marshes are very productive, and, as a consequence, the coasts have one of the richest fishing areas in the world. The complex lagoon and marsh areas are conserved in excellent condition. The annual migration of birds on the Pacific route find in the Reserve extensive protected areas in which to rest and feed. Thousands of sea birds, shorebirds, and raptors feed in the rich shorelines, in both winter and summer.
Read more of the article by Miguel Ángel Torres and Micheline Cariño | December 13, 2007 in http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4817
"Saving the Gray Whale: People, Politics, and Conservation in Baja California" written by WiLDCOAST Executive Director Serge Dedina Ph.D.
