PROPOSED SALT PRODUCTION FACILITY IN SAN IGNACIO LAGOON
BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR, MEXICO

Natural History, Exploitation, Protection, and Current Status of the Gray Whale Population in Mexico

From a report by Dedina, S. and E.H. Young (1995). Conservation and development in the gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) lagoons of Baja California Sur, Mexico., U.S. Marine Mammal Commission:81

Laguna San Ignacio is the only primary gray whale breeding/calving area in Mexico that remains superficially unaltered. In contrast, portions of Bahia Magdalena have been changed by industrial and mining activities, as well as the recent construction of a thermoelectric plant. The majority of local residents at both sites are employed in fisheries, which suffer from chronic over-harvesting and poaching.

While Laguna San Ignacio is formally protected as part of the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve and Bahia Magdalena remains unprotected, they face similar problems in terms of management structure, insufficient funding, and a shortage of on-site personnel, facilities, and equipment.

In both areas, problems related to gray whale tourism have emerged as a result of:

One issue of particular concern is that of how to better redistribute the economic benefits from gray whale tourism and elicit more active involvement of local communities in gray whale conservation programs.

Mexico has played an important role in protecting the gray whale population and the population's main wintering areas. The gray whale has become a powerful political symbol of Mexico's commitment to environmental protection. Three federal agencies are primarily responsible for on-site protection of gray whales and regulation of human activities in Laguna San Ignacio and Bahia Magdalena. These are the National Institute of Ecology (INE), Federal Attorney General's Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa), and the Secretariat of Fisheries (Pesca). In terms of restricting development activities, INE and Profepa are both legally obligated to work within the legislative framework provided by the 1988 General Ecology Law to review and prevent development projects that could cause adverse impacts to critical gray whale habitats in both areas. Under the 1992 Fisheries Law, Pesca is required to develop conservation programs for marine mammals. Article 254 bis of the Federal Penal Code prescribes up to six years in prison for individuals convicted of harassing or killing marine mammals. In Laguna San Ignacio, federal agencies have taken the lead role in habitat conservation. In Bahia Magdalena, the municipal government of Comondu has convened local residents, state, and federal agencies to discuss issues related to tourism development and conservation in the bay.

The greatest threats to the whales and their habitats are from:

Strict review and monitoring of development and whale-tourism by INE, Profepa, and Pesca under existing environmental impact assessment regulations, and the review of project plans and tourism activities by non-governmental organizations, research institutions and scientists familiar with gray whale habitats, should help to minimize potentially adverse impacts.

Possible ways to improve conservation of gray whales and their habitats in Laguna San Ignacio and Bahia Magdalena are to:
Date: 20th June, 1995
Whale Lagoon
By ERNEST SANDER - Associated Press Writer

LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO, Mexico -- Here on the Baja California peninsula, temperate aqua water laps against desert shores of sand, yucca and creosote bushes. Shacks of corrugated metal, netting and discarded wood, where local fishermen live, are the only signs of civilization.

It is hardly the image of conflict. But it is. Every winter and spring a spectacular event comes to this secluded bay. California gray whales migrate 6,000 miles from the Bering Sea to this lagoon and several others nearby to mate and bear their young.

Tourists trek to see, hear and sometimes touch the whales. Locals consider the sea mammals part of the regional identity. So prized is this annual rite and its pristine backdrop that the government has designated the land a protected reserve. The pledge to set aside this space and keep it free of further industrialization is being sorely tested by a Mexican company's plan to expand its salt-mining operation on the lagoon. The company, Exportadora de Sal, is the world's second-largest salt producer and a rare profitable government-run business in Mexico.

Mexico's National Ecology Institute, counterpart to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has rejected the proposal to expand, but the company has appealed. The issue is being viewed as a test of Mexico's commitment to the environment in times of economic distress. The stakes are even higher because it involves an adored animal whose graduation from the endangered species list is considered one of the great victories of animal conservation.
"If you have a protected area, a national park with biodiversity, you cannot sacrifice all these natural resources and biodiversity to get out of an economic crisis," said Maria Elena Sanchez, a biologist and member of Group of 100, an environmental organization based in Mexico City.

Exportadora de Sal, which wants to extend its current operation to the outskirts of Laguna San Ignacio, says the project will produce jobs and economic security. Without the extra $100 million in revenue, it would be forced out of business by an Australian firm underpricing it, company officials say. Critics, including authors Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz and Allen Ginsberg, contend Exportadora is not under any competitive threat, but is just being greedy.
"We are the best ecologists because we live here," said Rodolfo Garayzar, who heads the union of salt workers in the city of Guerrero Negro.
"We have been here for 40 years, and not one whale has died."

No one knows exactly why the whales come to these waters during the first four months of each year. Neither the environmentalists nor the company can say with full confidence how the whales would be affected by Exportadora pumping millions of gallons of water from this lagoon onto 120,000 acres of nearby salt flats. The successive flooding and evaporations create layers of dried salt that are then extracted.

Would the whales stop coming? Would they go to another lagoon? Do they even need to calve in a lagoon?

Some scientists claim the whales are drawn by the shelter and the warm, salty, shallow water, but researcher James Sumich says that is speculation. "Everybody can make their own story, but the information is just not that solid," said Sumich, a marine biologist at San Diego's Grossmont College who did his doctorate work at Laguna San Ignacio.

Late last century, gray whales were slaughtered en masse in these lagoons by hunters, including Captain Charles Melville Scammons, who made a fortune from the oil. One of the lagoons is now named after him. Mexico banned commercial whaling in 1954, the same year Exportadora de Sal moved into Guerrero Negro, north of Laguna San Ignacio. Gradually, the gray whales began returning, and in 1972 and 1979, presidential decrees established the land as a refuge for whales and their calves.

Even by the standards of stark, untrammeled beauty along the thousand-mile Baja coastline, the Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve, anchored by Laguna San Ignacio, is unique. Snowy plover, the California least tern, marine green turtles and peregrine falcons inhabit the area, which contains the northernmost distribution of mangroves in the continent.

Environmentalists fear the salt firm's $120 million expansion would alter the natural balance in the lagoon and on the land surrounding it. Pulling water from the bay would change its temperature and salinity as a current of cold, less-salty water circulates in from the ocean. Digging and scratching to extract salt could change the land's ecosystems. More machines and boats could also scare away visiting animals.

In rejecting the Exportadora proposal, the National Ecology Institute said it was not compatible with the goal of a biosphere reserve -- to shelter plant and animal habitats from possible harm. Exportadora has declined to comment on the ruling or on its plans. Twice, subdirectors from the company failed to appear for scheduled interviews with a reporter, and they have not returned numerous phone calls.

Union boss Garayzar claims the media has spread misinformation about the company. He indignantly recounts Mexican news reports claiming Exportadora "kills whales" and inaccurate references to it as a Japanese company. (It is 49 percent owned by Mitsubishi.)

As he walks through the company's Guerrero Negro grounds, past mountainous mounds of salt, the crane and conveyor belts leading to barges bound for Japan and the United States, Garayzar notes signs of the company's conscience. He points out perches the company has built for the osprey to nest in.
"Exportadora doesn't attack species," he said. "We defend life. We care about it."

Guerrero Negro is a company town, where nearly 1,000 of its 15,000 residents work at the salt plant. Clothing shops, furniture stores, gas stations and taxi drivers depend on Exportadora workers for their business. At noon, a siren sounds for lunch, and men in yellow hard hats and blue "ES" windbreakers file from the company gates to take their lunch breaks at home.

There are baseball fields, gymnasiums, boxing facilities and a junior college for company employees. The union hands out whale patches to those who work hard and are accident-free, to those who study hard and excel at sports. Even the chandeliers in the simple Nuestra Senora de Guadeloupe church are crested with black metal whale carvings.

On a recent night, a car from the local newspaper drove through town with a bullhorn announcing a rally in support of the plant expansion. Not a single dissenting voice was heard among the speeches at the hearing. Contrast this with the somnolent, windswept life on the shores of Laguna San Ignacio. Year-round, as early as 5:30 a.m., before the breeze picks up, the men who head the 700 fishing families along the lagoon ply the waters for shark, clams, lobster and scallops. They sell their haul to a truck that passes through and supplies northern Baja California cities. When they need groceries or car parts, sometimes they make the bumpy trip to San Ignacio, which itself has only several thousand people.

Most are aware of the company's proposal.
"I don't agree with it," says Jose Maria Aguilar Amador, a fisherman who has spent most of his life here. "It is an injustice to the birds, whales and fish."

Several huts away, leathery-skinned Francisco Mayoral unfolds blueprints of the Exportadora plan, rattling off details on locations and figures.
"There are many poor people who need work," he says, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. "The expansion is the best option."


UPDATE - Apr, 1996
from the Cetacean Society International

According to Grupo de los Cien, the Mexican environmental organization leading the effort to block the salt company's proposal, the issue has yet to be resolved - and it has taken some interesting twists. On February 29, 1996, the National Ecological Institute convened a public hearing on the subject in La Paz, Baja California Sur. The meeting was announced at virtually the last minute, and with no consultation with environmental groups such as Group of 100.

In spite of this apparent attempt to keep the public at large from commenting on the $120 million salt work expansion, however, a former director of ESSA, Fernando Guzman Lazo, came forth publicly to declare that the project would be both unnecessary and in violation of current Mexican law. And as for the Environmental Impact Assessments that ESSA must submit on the proposed construction, Guzman Lazo said that they are "superfluous and costly technical exercises".

At last year's meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), it was agreed that the Chair of the Scientific Committee (Dr. Steve Reilly), would work with the Mexican government to organize a committee of scientific experts to address the issue of potential harm to the gray whales and their habitat. While the committee - among whose members are such cetacean experts as Steve Reilly, Bruce Mate, Victor Marin and Steve Swartz - has had its first meeting, the role of the independent peer review group has not been determined, nor has the Mexican environmental community been kept abreast of their activities.

Grupo de los Cien continues to press the Mexican government to keep the oversight of the ESSA project as transparent and open to public comment as possible. But new information coming to light has led to the questioning of government motives in the process. As we noted in our earlier article, the ESSA Baja salt works is a joint venture between the Mexican government and Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan. Guzman Lazo, in his attacks on the new construction proposed, raised the specter of a possible third party with interests in weakening the environmental protection of the lagoons. Homero Aridjis, president of Grupo de los Cien, has questioned the participation of Raul Salinas in the project. Raul Salinas is the brother of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, during whose tenure the ESSA expansion was first proposed.

LATEST UPDATE 04Mar97



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