MND Local: Ecological and tourism challenges for Baja California Sur’s 3 oldest protected areas
The first Protected Natural Area (in Spanish, Área Natural Protegida, or ANP) in Baja California Sur was established in 1972, two years before the then territory officially became a Mexican state. That was the Ojo de Liebre Lagoon Complex, a gray whale sanctuary whose designation as a Biosphere Reserve helped pave the way not only for the state’s whale watching industry but for the 12 other ANPs that would subsequently be added.
These protected areas have been the site of many conservation success stories, but there have also been numerous setbacks, both due to climate change and to the pressures on these ecosystems from business and tourism-related developments. This is particularly true for the three oldest ANPs, which all date to the 1970s.
Ojo de Liebre Lagoon Complex and El Vizcaíno
Ojo de Liebre is a case in point. By 1988, it had been rolled into the larger El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, at 2.5 million hectares (or about 9,600 square miles), the largest wildlife sanctuary in Mexico. But in the 1990s, both dwindling numbers of Baja’s unique, desert-adapted antelope, the Peninsular Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana peninsularis) and the whales who came to breed in Ojo de Liebre each winter were threatened by a proposed saltworks from the Mitsubishi Corporation that would have operated within the bounds of El Vizcaíno and emptied a highly toxic, hyper-saline fluid called bitterns (or residual brine) into the lagoon complex.
That project was canceled by the Mexican government in 2000, after concentrated opposition from locals, scientists and environmental activists. The Peninsular Pronghorn is still endangered, but numbers have more than tripled in the decades since — thanks in part to captive breeding programs — from a low of less than 200 in the 1990s to over 600 now.
Gray whale challenges
Gray whale numbers, meanwhile, have dropped precipitously from a high of 27,000 in 2016 to between 11,700 and 14,450 as of 2025, but that’s not because of any failures on the part of Ojo de Liebre or El Vizcaíno. Rather, the Unusual Mortality Events in recent years contributing to the plunging population have been the result of malnourishment caused by a collapse of food sources in the whales’ summer Arctic feeding grounds; namely, bottom-dwelling amphipods.
El Vizcaíno is still an amazing place, home to endemic animals such as the Peninsular Pronghorn, the Vizcaíno Ground Squirrel (Notocitellus atricapillus), the Baja California Rat-Snake (Bogertophis rosaliae) and Baja California Legless Lizard (Anniella geronimensis), as well as more than 90 endemic plant species.
Cabo San Lucas
The state’s second ANP, Cabo San Lucas, remains the least managed, with virtually no formal rules to speak of, save a ban on fishing within its 3,996 hectares. That’s because Cabo San Lucas also happens to be the state’s leading tourist destination and revenue generator, and it has proven nearly impossible to reconcile conservation with commerce.
“Los Cabos is such an important destination from an economic point of view,” Benito Bermúdez Almada, regional director of the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (Conanp), recently told Sudcaliforniano, that “there is nothing to discuss, and from an environmental point of view, although everyone underestimates it, it is the best alert site for the behavior of oceanographic conditions in northwestern Mexico; the antennas are there.”
But lack of any meaningful regulation, combined with large-scale tourism — nearly four million people a year visit Los Cabos, with Cabo San Lucas’ Land’s End the focus of innumerable outdoor activities, from boating and diving to snorkeling, kayaking, paddle boarding and others — is certainly degrading the area around Land’s End, and having significant impacts on marine life.
Ecosystem challenges and possible solutions
Mexico’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) inventoried 839 native species in the protected area in 2010, at least 94 of which are currently at risk (12 endangered, 24 threatened, 58 under special protection).
When the Cabo San Lucas Flora and Fauna Protection Area was officially designated in 1973, it was primarily as an underwater refuge brought on by the discovery of underwater sand falls around Land’s End — the headland which accounts for about 5% of the ANP’s total area. Encouraged by Jacques Cousteau, the French oceanographer forever famous regionally for dubbing the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortés) as “the world’s aquarium,” the decree was signed by Mexican President Luis Echeverría on November 29, 1973, to protect what was recognized as a unique and fragile ecosystem.
In 2023, Conanp proposed an expansion to the area that would cover more areas at particular risk, including the underwater sandfalls and shallow reefs that act as nursery areas for fish populations, as well as put a cap on boat traffic. But the existing confusion caused by the lack of a management plan — 53 years after the ANP’s designation — combined with the exigencies of commerce, suggests nothing is going to happen in the short term.
Islas de Golfo de California
This protected area, first established in 1978 and later upgraded in 2000 under the same Flora and Fauna Protection Area classification given to Cabo San Lucas, is absolutely massive in its extent: 374,553 hectares encompassing more than 900 islands, islets, coves and coastal zone that fall within the boundaries of four Mexican states: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa and Sonora.
These islands are known for their unique endemism: 43 reptile species, such as the rattleless rattlesnake of Santa Catalina Island, and 80 to 90 fish species, including the endangered totoaba and vaquita porpoise, are found nowhere else in the world.
The problem, of course, is these mostly uninhabited islands are almost impossible to police in any meaningful way, not only because of the jurisdictional nightmare but because of their remote nature.
Then there are the problems posed by tourist developments like the megaproject Península de los Sueños at Punta Arena in La Paz municipality, where real estate interests are pushing to build 7,000 residences and 7,000 hotel rooms, as well as an airstrip and 446-berth marina right across the narrow channel from Cerralvo Island (aka Isla Jacques Cousteau), one of the core islands protected under the Islas de Golfo banner.
A direct challenge to Islas de Golfo
Heavy yacht traffic and noise pollution are two issues that could arise for the island’s protected flora and fauna, although neither would likely be as serious as the 7.98 million gallons of highly concentrated salt brine that would be pumped back into the Sea of Cortés daily because of three proposed desalination plants.
“They think desalination plants are the magic solution,” notes Frida Lara, scientific coordinator at Orgcas, a women-led non-profit in La Paz dedicated to marine conservation, per Causa Natura. “The big question is what is going to happen with the management of the brine, and there is no very clear answer as to what they are going to do with it. Another question is that it uses a lot of energy, in a region where electrical energy is limited and depends a lot on fuel oil, which is polluting.”
A petition to stop the project on Change.org currently has over 24,000 signatures.
Chris Sands is a writer and editor for Mexico News Daily, and the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He has also contributed to numerous other websites and publications, including The San Diego Union-Tribune, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise and Travel, and Cabo Living.
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