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Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California Sur, Mexico, is located on the Pacific side of the Baja California Peninsula, just 550 miles south of San Diego. It is one of only three remaining lagoons on the Pacific Coast that is a primary destination for migrating gray whales, a place where they can give birth free from noise, container ships and urban pollution. Indeed, it is the only remaining pristine nursery lagoon for gray whales left in the world.For these whales -- nearly hunted to extinction in this century, but now numbering some 22,000 -- San Ignacio offers warm, shallow waters and a safe haven for helpless young calves -- essential ingredients to ensure their species' survival.
For human visitors willing to travel far from developed destinations, San Ignacio promises a rare taste of wilderness. Nearby mangroves line a pristine estuary, supporting a bewildering variety of birds and aquatic creatures, many of which are threatened or endangered. In addition, San Ignacio promises the chance for awe-inspiring, hands-on encounters with the so-called "friendly" whales themselves.
Unfortunately, as far as the Mitsubishi corporation is concerned, what San Ignacio Lagoon offers can be reduced to is two simple and potentially profitable elements: salt and sun. And in 1994, they proposed building a large salt evaporation facility near the lagoon to capitalize on these two resources.
Industrial development plans for San Ignacio would at first appear absurd, given the fact that the lagoon is located within a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site.
Yet Mitsubishi and the Mexican government, through a joint venture known as Exportadora de Sal, S.A. (ESSA), are pursuing this project, despite significant opposition from environmentalists and scientists from around the world.
To justify the new saltworks plant, adjacent to the north shore of the lagoon, ESSA has agreed to conduct a comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). It is estimated the EIA will require 18 months of study before completion.
The stakes for developing this facility are high. In addition to Mexico's standard EIA requirements, the Mexican National Institute of Ecology, with advice from an international scientific panel, has set up additional scientific, economic and social hurdles for the proposal to meet. ESSA is required by Mexican law to prepare the EIA of the proposed project and to make the results public.
The Mexican Environmental Ministry deserves credit for insisting that this study be subjected to an unprecedented review by the international scientific review committee before any final decision is made on the project.
However, fundamental questions about relationships between humans, development, wildlife and the value of wilderness will remain, long after San Ignacio's fish larvae are counted and the gray whale's travel routes are plotted on a biologist's chart.
In a world of rapidly disappearing wilderness, how shall we determine where human development best belongs, and where wildlife deserves to exist apart from such things?
Can we accurately measure the impact of development on wildlife, or for that matter, quantify an aesthetic quality such as "wilderness?"
Basically, what ESSA hopes to do with its Environmental Impact Assessment is reduce San Ignacio to the sum of its parts, and prove they will all remain, like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle, despite a massive saltworks facility operating in its midst.
Here in San Diego, we have been quick to justify developments in areas that provide homes for species other than humans, while speaking of "habitat mitigation" and "species conservation programs." The result has been the loss of 90 percent of our native wetlands, and similar losses of grasslands and chaparrals.
Meanwhile, the artificial wetlands that have been created to replace those that have been dredged and filled simply haven't worked. They might look the same, and include the same plants and waterways, but for reasons that even our best scientists can't quite determine, they don't function the same as original, undisturbed habitats. Many of the birds, insects and other animals that once lived here have disappeared.
If ESSA and the Mexican government really want to find out what's at stake in San Ignacio lagoon, perhaps they are looking in the wrong place.
They need to travel north, and talk to some of the thousands of people who have thrilled to the sight of gray whales migrating along the coastline, from the Bering Sea to Baja. Some of these people, especially the children, may dream of one day visiting San Ignacio, and touching a young whale's rubbery snout or camping on the lagoon's shore and enjoying a silence broken only by the sound of whales breathing.
For these people, the value of keeping San Ignacio wild and free from development is far greater than the potential profits from its salt.
But so long as researchers insist counting and measuring when it comes to conducting environmental impact statements, rather than recognizing the intangible values of wilderness and the emotional allure of wildlife, we're asking the wrong questions and are destined to continue arriving at the wrong answers.
SPALDING is an international environmental policy and law specialist working with the Natural Resources Defense Council to coordinate an international effort to block the ESSA saltworks development at Laguna San Ignacio. He is also a research fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UCSD. He can be reached via e-mail at mspalding@ucsd.edu.SALDAÑA has lived, camped and kayaked throughout Baja California, including San Ignacio, Magdalena and Scammons lagoons. In July 1999, President Clinton appointed her to serve on the Border Environment Cooperation Commission's (BECC) Advisory Council. She can be reached via e-mail at lsaldana@netconnection.com
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