Enviros Blast UN For Not Protecting Mexican Whale Breeding Grounds

by Pilar Franco

A recent UNESCO mission decided not to add the El Vizcaino reserve, off the coast of the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California Sur, to the UN agency's list of endangered world heritage sites.

UNESCO experts carrying out field research on the conditions in El Vizcaino, to which thousands of grey whales migrate from Alaska every year to mate, concluded that there were no arguments to back the petition brought by environmental groups like Greenpeace.

The World Heritage Committee mission that visited the lagoons of San Ignacio and Ojo de Liebre on Mexico's Pacific coast from Aug. 23 to 28 will formally submit its decision and recommendations to the Mexican government at a global UNESCO meeting in Morocco on Nov. 28.

The Mexican-Japanese company Exportadora de Sal (ESSA) is keen to set up shop at the San Ignacio lagoon. But the proposal has not yet been approved, said Congresswoman Veronica Velasco, a member of the Chamber of Deputies commission investigating the firm's request to expand its saltworks.

ESSA -- in which the Mexican state holds a 51 percent controlling stake, while the rest is owned by the Japanese firm Mitsubishi -- produces seven million tons of salt a year in Guerrero Negro and the Ojo de Liebre lagoon. Most of the salt is exported to Japan.

Four years ago, local authorities refused ESSA permission to expand its activities to the area around the San Ignacio lagoon, arguing that the production of salt there was incompatible with the goal of conserving the ecosystem.

But Secretary of the Environment Julia Carabias said the demand by non-governmental organizations to ban all commercial activity in the whale sanctuary and nearby lagoons was completely unfounded from a technical and scientific point of view.

A decision of such magnitude, based on misinformation, would hurt Mexico's image, she maintained.

For the past five years, ESSA has been trying to obtain permission to produce salt on some 54,000 hectares along the San Ignacio lagoon, part of the El Vizcaino ecosystem. The company proposes an investment of $120 million, and offers the creation of 200 permanent jobs.

The project would entail the suctioning of 1.5 million cubic meters of water a year from the San Ignacio lagoon, declared a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1993.

The company maintains that the marine currents flowing into the lagoon bring 200 times the quantity of water that would be extracted for evaporation daily -- in other words, a mere 0.5 percent of the volume of water brought by the high tide twice a day would be used in the production of salt.

But NGOs warn that a number of marine species would be jeopardized by contamination from oil leaks, the increased boat traffic needed for loading and shipping the salt, and the growth of human settlements in the area.

Officials with the secretariats of foreign relations, commerce, education and the environment gave their assurances to the members of the UNESCO committee that Mexico would bring to bear the full weight of the law in assessing the viability of the proposed saltworks project.

Environmental organizations and local inhabitants also protest that if the plan to expand the saltworks is approved, the presence of grey whales -- which along with seven other species of mammals migrate to the waters off Mexico's coasts every winter -- will be reduced.

Greenpeace and local environmental organizations sued ESSA this year for dumping toxic brine into the lagoons of Baja California. The dumped waste caused the death of Prieta sea turtles, an endangered species, as well as fish and mollusks.

Toxic or bitter brine is a waste product generated during the production of salt by evaporation of sea water, and contains a high proportion of heavy metals like lead, arsenic and mercury, according to the environmental organizations.

Last winter, some 10,000 whales migrated to Mexico's waters, and 52 died when they began the return journey to the Arctic sea. Greenpeace accused Mexican authorities of "refusing to carry out an in-depth study" of the causes of the death of marine mammals off the country's coastline, one of the longest in the world.

"Mexico's state of law and international prestige are on trial along with (ESSA's) expansion plan," said analyst Agustin Gutierrez Canet.

The idea of choosing between economic development and conservation of habitat "is a false dilemma, because development should never be accomplished through the extermination of nature," said Gutierrez Canet.

The Coalition for the Defense of San Ignacio argues that the proposed expansion of the saltworks would violate Mexican law, because the grey whale sanctuary is part of the El Vizcaino biosphere reserve.

But the Alliance of South Californian People and Communal Lands labelled the campaign waged by ecologists against the saltworks in Guerrero Negro, which provide jobs to 12,000 people, a "disgrace."