History of Cuatrociénegas’ aquatic habitats with reflections on current conditions and restoration potential

Authors: Dean A. Hendrickson

Year: 2008 (xl)

Abstract

Cuatrociénegas’ long history of human impacts on wetlands will be reviewed and the broad scale measures required to sustain the natural aquatic ecosystems and a prosperous human community will be discussed. Surface waters have been massively reduced since the first canals were constructed over 100 years ago, and the valley is now further threatened by invasive species and increasing tourism. Much remains to be learned about hydrology of the region, but it appears that in many cases impacts of past manipulations are slow to be expressed as they propagate downstream over decades. The temporal scale of changes is enough that the sliding baseline phenomenon has resulted in ignorance among many stakeholders regarding what the area used to be like. If current trends continue, extinctions of endemic fauna will be witnessed in the not too distant future, and the human economy will continue to decline, forcing emigration of a large segment of the population. Declaration of the area as a protected area 14 years ago, while certainly appropriate, has had little beneficial impact on turning the tide that slowly started going out with those first canals and has accelerated with rapidly increasing groundwater exploitation during the last decade. The issues that need to be addressed greatly transcend CONANP’s geographic and legislated scope and authority. Sustainable solutions for both native fauna and flora and humans are in fact complementary, though neither the biota nor the human will be able to persist without compromises. Sustaining Cuatrociénegas as both a Protected Natural Area that truly protects its diverse and highly endemic biota, while at the same time sustaining a viable human economy, will require broad, inter-agency and community-wide binding and enforceable agreements, as well as substantial government investment over an extended time period. While data gaps persist, enough is known now to allow some meaningful steps in the right direction to be taken immediately, but immediate actions are socioeconomically not possible. Negotiating and finalizing agreements required to implement such actions will entail intensive, well coordinated, interdisciplinary research carried out in close collaboration with the local community. Such broad scale collaborations and discussions will require researchers and government agencies to establish trusting relationships among themselves and with all stakeholders - a task that will be difficult at best given current levels of animosity among many stakeholders. Invariably sustainable solutions will require some stakeholders to make difficult compromises, and legal actions by some government agencies will also probably be unavoidable to force others, yet a sustainable and prosperous future for Cuatrociénegas’ fauna (human and other) and flora is attainable.