Tag Archives: Gulf of California

UC Natural Reserve System gains Sister Reserve in Baja California

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UC Natural Reserve System gains sister reserve in Baja California Sur

UC Natural Reserve System gains sister reserve in Baja California Sur

June 4, 2019 By Kathleen Wong

The Gulf of California is a marine wonderland. Washed by crystal blue waters and dotted with arid islands large and small, it teems with whales, sea turtles, manta rays, and other animals that thrive in this spectacular meeting of desert and sea.

This extraordinary region is now available to UC Natural Reserve System users thanks to a sister reserve agreement brokered with a Mexican nonprofit. Located in Baja California Sur, Eco-Alianza de Loreto A.C. works to protect and preserve the ecosystems of the Bahía de Loreto. The 12-year-old organization conducts water quality monitoring, raises public awareness of the value of the area’s marine, coastal, and terrestrial habitats, and collaborates with universities and other institutions to foster environmental research.

A mutually beneficial partnership

“Both partners will reap a multitude of benefits,” says Peggy Fiedler, executive director of the UC NRS. “Eco-Alianza will be able to arrange places for our users to stay and resources such as boat moorings. Meanwhile, UC can provide marine research and educational opportunities for the people of Loreto and Baja Sur.”

“Our goal is to create a strong alliance with our friends on both sides of the border, with the long term objective of increasing knowledge and building protective networks for wildlife that know no borders,” says Hugo Quintero Maldonado, co-founder and executive president of Eco-Alianza.

Becoming an NRS sister reserve “provides a rich opportunity to strengthen our ongoing collaboration between the U.S. and Mexico. This will include the expanded sharing of expertise and technology in areas of conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of resources,” says Linda Kinninger, a cofounder of Eco-Alianza who now serves on the organization’s board.

A jumping-off point for land and sea expeditions

Eco-Alianza is based in the historic town of Loreto, located two-thirds of the way down the eastern side of the Baja Peninsula. Just offshore lie the waters of the Bahía de Loreto. The 510,000-acre bay is internationally acclaimed as an ecological gem. It was declared a Mexican national park in 1996, and named a Ramsar wetland of international importance in 2004. In addition, Bahía de Loreto and all of its islands are part of the Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California UNESCO World Heritage site.

Suzanne Olyarnik, director of the NRS’s Bodega Marine Reserve, visited Loreto this past March as an NRS representative. She came away deeply impressed by the commitment and interest in a partnership with the NRS. “The people of Loreto are eager to interact with researchers who can get students excited about science,” she says.

The Loreto area is rich with biological diversity, Olyarnik says, as well as intriguing oceanographic and geologic features. “From a marine science point of view, it’s an amazing place that we have only begun to explore. I am excited that the NRS can facilitate more people to come down and do academic and applied research to contribute to the management of what they have.”

An education and research exchange

UC faculty are eager to begin using the reserve. Among them is Nicholas Pinter, a professor of geosciences at UC Davis. “The vision for a Loreto reserve and field station is to serve as a spark — to bring research, education, scientific recognition and knowledge, and broader visibility to the Loreto region. We imagine Loreto as a mecca for scientific visitors to study and admire the area’s abundant natural wonders,” Pinter says.

For their part, the people of Loreto hope NRS visitors spark more interest in the natural sciences. “Collaborating with local researchers, educators, and authorities, we expect the team will foster additional understanding of our rich natural resources, strengthen the scientific and academic sectors here, and add to the rich cultural mosaic that is Loreto,” says Loreto mayor Arely Arce.

Arce and Eco-Alianza hope a UC-led uptick in environmental research will encourage the local university to launch a marine science program. At present, the Loreto campus of the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur lacks a marine science program; the nearest program is located at the university’s La Paz campus, more than a four-hour drive away.

Eco-Alianza is the NRS’s second sister reserve to date. The first sister reserve arrangement, with Gobabeb Research and Training Centre in Namibia, was established in 2017. A number of exchanges between UC and this African desert reserve are already occurring, including a proposed UC Riverside study abroad course on ecology and herpetology, plus research into desert reptile physiology and how much moisture fog contributes to desert plants.

The growing NRS family

The NRS sister reserve designation is the second recent alliance between Loreto and an American organization. In 2016, the U.S. National Park Service and Mexico’s Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources established a Sister Park Partnership Initiative between Channel Islands National Park and Bahía de Loreto National Park. The NRS’s Santa Cruz Island Reserve is adjacent to Channel Islands National Park and works closely with the park on island research and management issues.

The Eco-Alianza sister reserve agreement comes hot on the heels of NRS growth in California. Point Reyes Field Station and Lassen Field Station both joined the NRS this May via partnerships with the National Park Service.

 

Gulf of California – World Heritage Site

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Blue-footed Boobie Taking Flight
Baby Yellowtail

The Gulf of California  was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 2005, with modifications added in 2007 and 2011. Considering it’s beauty and bounty, it is easy to see why this area received recognition. A brief description from their website gives an overview of why this wondrous area is protected:

Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California

The site comprises 244 islands, islets and coastal areas that are located in the Gulf of California in north-eastern Mexico. The Sea of Cortez and its islands have been called a natural laboratory for the investigation of speciation. Moreover, almost all major oceanographic processes occurring in the planet’s oceans are present in the property, giving it extraordinary importance for study. The site is one of striking natural beauty in a dramatic setting formed by rugged islands with high cliffs and sandy beaches, which contrast with the brilliant reflection from the desert and the surrounding turquoise waters. It is home to 695 vascular plant species, more than in any marine and insular property on the World Heritage List. Equally exceptional is the number of fish species: 891, 90 of them endemic. The site, moreover, contains 39% of the world’s total number of species of marine mammals and a third of the world’s marine cetacean species.

Loreto Bay National Marine Park is one of the areas included in the World Heritage designation.  Efforts of local and government organizations focus on maintaining the seas bounty and wild beauty, and are supported by increasing awareness by organizations such as Eco-Alianza de Loreto.

For additional descriptions of the criteria for inclusion as a World Heritage Site – as well as expanded details on the areas themselves, here is alink to the site: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1182

MAP supplement information Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California2011.jpg

Conservation and the Plight of the Vaquita

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‘The last fallen mahogany would lie perceptibly on the landscape, and the last black rhino would be obvious in its loneliness, but a marine species may disappear beneath the waves unobserved and the sea would seem to roll on the same as always.”
– G. Carleton Ray in “Biodiversity”, National Academy Press, 1988

Last week I had the honor of attending the Conservation Science Symposium in Loreto, BCS, sponsored The Ocean Foundation and a consortium of charitable organizations. Researchers, scientists, and resource managers from both the United States and Mexico, joined with local community members in a dialog about conservation in the Gulf of California and Baja.

For the most part, Baja California is a rugged and arid desert region with mountain ranges that separate the Pacific Coast from the eastern Sea of Cortez. There are small eco-systems within the overall peninsula that affect fisheries, agriculture, and the availability of water.

The symposium was broken into multiple tracks with presentations ranging from “Protected Areas and Biodiversity” to “Species of Concern.” Overarching was a discussion of community involvement, government interaction, and how to manage conservation for the most effective outcomes, both to habitat and to human populations.
The conversations were lively. Everyone is a stake holder – whether a developer who wants to grade down a mountain for a real estate development (and disrupt and/or destroy a watershed in the process) or a fishermen, whose entire livelihood is based on the bounty of the sea. In many ways, it is only now, in this age of rapid and constant information exchange, that we become increasingly aware of the effects of our actions and activities.

In the northern Gulf of California, there is small dolphin, the Vaquita, which has been seen by very few human beings. It is the smallest – less than 5’ long, with calves the size of a loaf of bread – and rarest cetacean on earth. It is estimated that less than 200 remain. When they are seen, they are tangled in the shrimp fishermen’s gillnets and drowned – adults, juveniles, and newborns.

Vaquita, or “The Desert Porpoise,” came into a small spotlight after a 2006 expedition led by Bob Pitman to search for the Baji dolphin on the Yangtze River in China. After two months of searching, not one dolphin was spotted, nor had the local population seen any. The Baji had become extinct because of human population expansion and related activities. Extinct: as in no more, never again, gone forever.

The situation in the upper regions of the Gulf of California is similar to that of China. The men who fish the region know no other trade, nor are there opportunities for change. They do what they know how to do to feed their families, and in most instances, live a subsistence existence. How to convince a man who needs to eat, that his activities, which are killing off a small sea mammal, need to be changed?
Several approaches have been developed and are being tried simultaneously. Education about the plight of the Vaquita is a keystone.

A protected zone – a no-take area – was established with the northern waters around the known Vaquita habitat. Alternatives to gillnet fishing are being explored. The Mexican government, along with several NGOs, developed a plan that either bought out fishing permits or ‘rented’ them.

If all the programs fail, then the Vaquita – like the Baji – will no longer swim in the Sea of Cortez.

It did not go unnoticed by the attendees at the Conservation Symposium that the US administration voted not to list the Bluefin Tuna as an endangered species. The rationale was that no one could prove, that without protection, that the tuna would disappear.

There were cheers from the fishing industry, where one Bluefin can sell in the Japanese market for up to $400,000. There were wails from those whose research has followed the majestic tuna’s decline. Between 1970 and 1992 the eastern Atlantic’s stocks declined by 80 percent; the western stocks by more than 70%.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration classified the fish as a species of concern. The Bluefin’s’ fate now lies in the hands of international management, which has high levels of infighting and insufficient oversight.

Which brings the conversation full circle to governance. How to we choose what to protect – be it a watershed, a desert porpoise, a wolf, or a migrating swan? And when we collectively decide, how do we implement agreed upon standards to ‘police’ those protections, whom do we choose to enforce them, and how do we fund the process?

The Conservation Science Symposium opened a dialog that is valuable to continue. Since human activities appear to be the cause of modern day species extinctions, it is up to us to change that course.

First published in the Coastline Pilot, “Chasing the Muse: Reversing the Course of Species Extinction,” June 3, 2011.