Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

Unique Mexican Oasis in Danger of Vanishing

Emilio Godoy

MEXICO CITY, Nov 18 2011 (IPS) - A rare wetlands ecosystem in the Chihuahuan desert in northern Mexico that may hold key information about the origins of life on earth – and even about possible life on Mars – is in serious danger of disappearing if water continues to be extracted by agribusiness concerns, local scientists warn.

The 200-km-long Valle de Cuatrociénegas – “valley of four marshes” – located 1,000 km north of Mexico City is a complex ancient wetlands system of mineral-rich springs, streams, lakes, marshes and turquoise pools of water known as “pozas” fed by natural underground channels and surrounded by a mountain chain with peaks over 3,000 metres high.

“It is our only window for understanding the planet’s past, why life emerged here, and we aren’t taking care of it as we should,” Valeria Souza, a researcher at the ecology institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told IPS.

“Instead of trying to understand how the ecosystem functions, the authorities have dedicated themselves to exploiting it and taking away as much as they can, in exchange for nothing,” she complained.

Souza, who has received several environmental awards, has been studying the area since 2000, along with other scientists from Mexico and abroad.

The extraordinary biodiversity and number of endemic species in Cuatrociénegas make its ecosystem as unique as that of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands.

The basin, declared a natural protected area in 1994, covers 84,350 hectares, and is home to more than 70 endemic species – which means they are found nowhere else on earth – including the only aquatic box turtle in the world and several species of tropical-looking fish.

“A lot of water is removed and transported to other valleys to grow alfalfa, which requires a great deal of water,” said Francisco Valdés, an environmentalist and professor at the public Technological Institute of La Laguna in the city of Torreón, near the nature reserve.

“Since 2000 we have had several wet years and the aquifers were recharged, and the water was running in the underground channels. But this year has been very dry,” he told IPS.

The National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity says the valley is under threat due to the growing extraction of surface and underground water for irrigation, the transformation of habitats, the spread of exotic species, livestock grazing, the cutting of trees for firewood, illegal cactus gathering, poaching of reptiles, the exploitation of gypsum, and unregulated tourism.

Experts also accuse the local dairy industry and the growers of alfalfa – which is used for animal feed – of exhausting the water resources of Cuatrociénegas.

Some 500,000 head of cattle in the area produce seven million litres of milk a day for the domestic market and for export.

In Mexico, it takes approximately 2,500 litres of water to produce one litre of milk, according to “Water Footprint of Nations”, a report by the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education.

Mexico’s national water authority, Conagua, says there are nine aquifers in the region, which are all overexploited and which supply 1.23 billion cubic metres of water a year, while they are only replenished with 868 million cubic metres a year.

Cuatrociénegas is one of the 55 priority wetlands in Mexico under the Ramsar Convention, an intergovernmental treaty on conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources in force since 1975.

The drying up of the Churince poza, the ecosystem’s oldest pond, bodes poorly for the reserve, warns Evan Carson, a biologist at the University of New Mexico in the U.S.

After his last two visits, in March and May, Carson, who has been studying the ecosystem since 1998, reported in a research study “Churince System Status aquatic fauna” that “at this point, the Churince system is essentially a dead system, at least relative to its former condition.”

At least three species of fish and two species of snails, all endemic to the ecosystem, may have been “extirpated from this system,” and “more environmentally hardy species have also been reduced in population size and shifted in geographic distribution in the system,” Carson wrote.

He concluded his paper by warning that “arresting water extraction (from the ecosystem) may already be too little, too late.”

Although conservative President Felipe Calderón has promised since 2007 to invest about 75 million dollars to preserve the nature reserve, only around eight million dollars have been disbursed.

In September, Conagua signed an agreement with the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas to pipe 100 litres of water per second into Churince, an amount that was to be increased to 300 litres in December. But the agreement was abruptly cancelled, presumably due to pressure from large agricultural producers.

Scientific researchers, whose warnings over the last few years have fallen on deaf ears, recommend an immediate ban on extraction of water and the implementation of alternative agricultural projects, to maximise the use of water.

“The problem is that the authorities think of water not as something essential to life but as something that can be bought and sold. That has led to ecocide. It is impossible to reverse the damage, because the ancient water reserves are gone. The deep underground water is running out, and without it, Cuatrociénegas is nothing,” Souza said.

The researcher, who predicts that the area will not survive more than two more summers under the current conditions, has launched an online petition drive to urge the government to rescue the threatened ecosystem. So far she has collected just over 3,000 signatures.

In September 2010, Souza began a biodiversity inventory in a project sponsored by the Mexican office of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Carlos Slim Foundation to “understand who lives where, from the tiniest virus to coyotes, and who feeds whom,” said Souza.

“There are very powerful economic interests involved here,” said Professor Valdés. “But alfalfa should no longer be grown in Cuatrociénegas, because the local community reaps no economic benefits from it, and a productive reconversion effort is needed.”

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is studying microorganisms in Cuatrociénegas that are similar to those that occurred on earth hundreds of millions of years ago, to help understand the origins of life on earth.

It also considers the unique wetlands useful for discovering life on Mars since the conditions are apparently similar to conditions on that planet.

NASA’s next Mars rover, Curiosity, will be launched Nov. 25 with a science laboratory, to explore a crater on that planet that Souza – who has been invited to the launch – describes as “similar to Churince.”