Guest Author - Wendy Amato

For years, conservation groups from the U.S. and Mexico have been trying to preserve Laguna San Ignacio, where gray whales migrate to breed. This month, the landholding group Ejido Luis Echeverria voted to limit development on almost 120,000 acres along the lagoon. The land will be placed in a private land trust and the group will receive $25,000 a year from a trust fund established through the International Community Foundation. The arrangement will be monitored by Pronatura, Mexico’s largest conservation group.

An ejido is a form of communal landholding designed to distribute property among landless Mexican citizens. This agreement at Laguna San Ignacio is seen as a huge victory for conservation, since many other ejido members are selling their parcels to developers. It is hoped that other ejidos can be persuaded to sign agreements similar to this one, eventually protecting one million acres in private trusts. To do so, however, may require more than $8 million, in order to make the offer more attractive than the ones offered by real estate developers.

Laguna San Ignacio is a small and protected warm-water lagoon on the Baja California Coast, attracting the gray whales who may travel more than 6,000 miles from their feeding grounds in the Arctic Ocean to bear their young in Mexico. The region became famous a few years ago when Mitsubishi Corp. proposed building a salt manufacturing plant there, which was successfully thwarted by activists and environmental groups. In 2003, the lagoon was designated a United Nations World Heritage Site. The region has become a successful eco-tourist attraction, allowing tourists to get close to the whales.