What is the Problem?

Laguna San Ignacio was the proposed site for the Mitsubishi industrial salt facility that was scheduled to be built on the lagoon shores a few years ago. Preservationists from Mexico and the U.S. fought this project for five years, and eventually Mexican President Zedillo canceled the government's participation in the project. However, the economic concession remains, and federal lands exist on which to launch another large-scale industrial project, just like Mitsubishi! Mega-resorts and land speculation also threaten to dramatically alter the pristine lagoon, and hundreds of square miles of wetlands and mangroves.

What is Laguna San Ignacio?

Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California Sur, Mexico, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the most pristine gray whale migration destinations on Earth. Two to three hundred whales congregate there every year to birth their young, rear them, and prepare them for the long journey north to Alaska.

A thriving ecotourism business has blossomed in this remote location, where hundreds of tourists flock each spring to view and touch the curious young whales.

Laguna San Ignacio is home to sea turtles, peregrine falcons, ospreys, and hundreds of thousands of migratory waterfowls and shorebirds, and is the last undeveloped gray whale birthing lagoon on the planet. Laguna San Ignacio is part of a 248-mile-coastline wetland complex that includes intertidal mudflats, salt flats, sandy beaches, and mangroves.


What is the Solution?

With the help of Wildcoast, Pronatura, a national-level conservation organization in Mexico, the International Community Foundation and NRDC things are beginning to change. The first conservation easement of 140,847 acres was approved in March 2005 by Ejido Luis Echevarria Alvarez, which will effectively restrict development on their communally-owned land and will establish zoning for economic uses, buffer areas, and protected sites. This easement will restrict development activities on lands that the ejido controls. The success of the project has convinced the Mexican government in 2006 to protect 66,500 acres of federal lands in the western shore of the lagoon.

In 2007, WiLDCOAST will work with the members of the Alliance to protect 174,300 acres owned by the Ejido Emiliano Zapata along the northern shore of Laguna San Ignacio. The model established in ELA, in which we help promote social and economic justice in order to protect biodiversity sites, will be replicated in Ejido Emiliano Zapata to ensure the long-term preservation of this important Gray whale habitat. The total cost to protect 174,300 acres in Ejido Emiliano Zapata is $1,838,000.

If you would like to join the fight to save Laguna San Ignacio please click HERE.