MND Local: Ecological and tourism challenges for Baja California Sur’s 3 oldest protected areas

The archetypal Protected Natural Area (in Spanish, Área Natural Protegida, oregon ANP) successful Baja California Sur was established successful 1972, 2 years earlier the past territory officially became a Mexican state. That was the Ojo de Liebre Lagoon Complex, a grey whale sanctuary whose designation arsenic a Biosphere Reserve helped pave the mode not lone for the state’s whale watching manufacture but for the 12 different ANPs that would subsequently beryllium added. 

These protected areas person been the tract of galore conservation occurrence stories, but determination person besides been galore setbacks, some owed to clime alteration and to the pressures connected these ecosystems from concern and tourism-related developments. This is peculiarly existent for the 3 oldest ANPs, which each day to the 1970s.

Ojo de Liebre Lagoon Complex and El Vizcaíno

The Ojo de Liebre Lagoon Complex has been a federally protected breeding sanctuary for grey whales successful Baja California Sur for implicit 50 years. (Simec/Conanp)

Ojo de Liebre is simply a lawsuit successful point. By 1988, it had been rolled into the larger El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, astatine 2.5 cardinal hectares (or astir 9,600 quadrate miles), the largest wildlife sanctuary successful Mexico. But successful the 1990s, some dwindling numbers of Baja’s unique, desert-adapted antelope, the Peninsular Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana peninsularis) and the whales who came to breed successful Ojo de Liebre each wintertime were threatened by a projected saltworks from the Mitsubishi Corporation that would person operated wrong the bounds of El Vizcaíno and emptied a highly toxic, hyper-saline fluid called bitterns (or residual brine) into the lagoon complex.

That task was canceled by the Mexican authorities successful 2000, aft concentrated absorption from locals, scientists and biology activists. The Peninsular Pronghorn is inactive endangered, but numbers person much than tripled successful the decades since — acknowledgment successful portion to captive breeding programs — from a debased of little than 200 successful the 1990s to implicit 600 now. 

Gray whale challenges

Gray whale numbers, meanwhile, person dropped precipitously from a precocious of 27,000 successful 2016 to betwixt 11,700 and 14,450 arsenic of 2025, but that’s not due to the fact that of immoderate failures connected the portion of Ojo de Liebre oregon El Vizcaíno. Rather, the Unusual Mortality Events successful caller years contributing to the plunging colonisation person been the effect of malnourishment caused by a illness of nutrient sources successful the whales’ summertime Arctic feeding grounds; namely, bottom-dwelling amphipods. 

El Vizcaíno is inactive an astonishing place, location to endemic animals specified arsenic the Peninsular Pronghorn, the Vizcaíno Ground Squirrel (Notocitellus atricapillus), the Baja California Rat-Snake (Bogertophis rosaliae) and Baja California Legless Lizard (Anniella geronimensis), arsenic good arsenic much than 90 endemic works species. 

Cabo San Lucas

The state’s 2nd ANP, Cabo San Lucas, remains the slightest managed, with virtually nary ceremonial rules to talk of, prevention a prohibition connected sportfishing wrong its 3,996 hectares. That’s due to the fact that Cabo San Lucas besides happens to beryllium the state’s starring tourer destination and gross generator, and it has proven astir intolerable to reconcile conservation with commerce.

“Los Cabos is specified an important destination from an economical constituent of view,” Benito Bermúdez Almada, determination manager of the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (Conanp), precocious told Sudcaliforniano, that “there is thing to discuss, and from an biology constituent of view, though everyone underestimates it, it is the champion alert tract for the behaviour of oceanographic conditions successful northwestern Mexico; the antennas are there.”

A representation showing the 12 federally protected areas successful Baja California Sur, arsenic good arsenic the 1 that is protected by the state: the San José del Cabo Estuary. (Gobierno de Baja California Sur)

But deficiency of immoderate meaningful regulation, combined with large-scale tourism — astir 4 cardinal radical a twelvemonth sojourn Los Cabos, with Cabo San Lucas’ Land’s End the absorption of innumerable outdoor activities, from boating and diving to snorkeling, kayaking, paddle boarding and others — is surely degrading the country astir Land’s End, and having important impacts connected marine life. 

Ecosystem challenges and imaginable solutions

Mexico’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) inventoried 839 autochthonal taxon successful the protected area successful 2010, astatine slightest 94 of which are presently astatine hazard (12 endangered, 24 threatened, 58 nether peculiar protection).

When the Cabo San Lucas Flora and Fauna Protection Area was officially designated successful 1973, it was chiefly arsenic an underwater refuge brought connected by the find of underwater soil falls astir Land’s End — the headland which accounts for astir 5% of the ANP’s full area. Encouraged by Jacques Cousteau, the French oceanographer everlastingly celebrated regionally for dubbing the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortés) arsenic “the world’s aquarium,” the decree was signed by Mexican President Luis Echeverría connected November 29, 1973, to support what was recognized arsenic a unsocial and fragile ecosystem.

In 2023, Conanp proposed an enlargement to the area that would screen much areas astatine peculiar risk, including the underwater sandfalls and shallow reefs that enactment arsenic nursery areas for food populations, arsenic good arsenic enactment a headdress connected vessel traffic. But the existing disorder caused by the deficiency of a absorption program — 53 years aft the ANP’s designation — combined with the exigencies of commerce, suggests thing is going to hap successful the abbreviated term.

Islas de Golfo de California

This protected area, archetypal established successful 1978 and aboriginal upgraded successful 2000 nether the aforesaid Flora and Fauna Protection Area classification fixed to Cabo San Lucas, is perfectly monolithic successful its extent: 374,553 hectares encompassing much than 900 islands, islets, coves and coastal portion that autumn wrong the boundaries of 4 Mexican states: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa and Sonora. 

These islands are known for their unsocial endemism: 43 reptile species, specified arsenic the rattleless rattlesnake of Santa Catalina Island, and 80 to 90 food species, including the endangered totoaba and vaquita porpoise, are recovered obscurity other successful the world. 

The presumption from Isla Cerralvo looking westward towards the seashore of mainland Baja California Sur, wherever a caller megaproject is successful the works. (James Connolly Davis/Wikimedia Commons)

The problem, of course, is these mostly uninhabited islands are astir intolerable to constabulary successful immoderate meaningful way, not lone due to the fact that of the jurisdictional nightmare but due to the fact that of their distant nature. 

Then determination are the problems posed by tourer developments similar the megaproject Península de los Sueños astatine Punta Arena successful La Paz municipality, wherever existent property interests are pushing to physique 7,000 residences and 7,000 edifice rooms, arsenic good arsenic an airstrip and 446-berth marina close crossed the constrictive transmission from Cerralvo Island (aka Isla Jacques Cousteau), 1 of the halfway islands protected nether the Islas de Golfo banner.

A nonstop situation to Islas de Golfo

Heavy yacht postulation and sound contamination are 2 issues that could originate for the island’s protected flora and fauna, though neither would apt beryllium arsenic superior arsenic the 7.98 cardinal gallons of highly concentrated brackish brine that would beryllium pumped backmost into the Sea of Cortés regular due to the fact that of 3 projected desalination plants. 

“They deliberation desalination plants are the magic solution,” notes Frida Lara, technological coordinator astatine Orgcas, a women-led non-profit successful La Paz dedicated to marine conservation, per Causa Natura. “The large question is what is going to hap with the absorption of the brine, and determination is nary precise wide reply arsenic to what they are going to bash with it. Another question is that it uses a batch of energy, successful a portion wherever electrical vigor is constricted and depends a batch connected substance oil, which is polluting.” 

A petition to halt the task connected Change.org presently has implicit 24,000 signatures.

Chris Sands is simply a writer and exertion for Mexico News Daily, and the erstwhile Cabo San Lucas section adept for the USA Today question website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos question guidebook. He has besides contributed to galore different websites and publications, including The San Diego Union-Tribune, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise and Travel, and Cabo Living.