Osvel Hinojosa Huerta paddles his canoe across the Cienega de Santa Clara one bright, warm fall day. The cienega, a 14,000-acre lake and marshland, lies near where the Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California in Mexico. Thick rows of cattails and tasseltopped reeds line the shore, providing habitat for the endangered Yuma clapper rail. The cienega’s shallow waters hold tilapia, catfish, carp, and largemouth bass, as well as desert pupfish, another endangered species. Overhead appear widgeons, cormorants, terns, pelicans, and herons. “This is the largest wetland in the delta,� says Hinojosa, a PhD candidate in wildlife biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson and director of Sonoran Desert conservation for Pronatura, [...]
Summary
Osvel Hinojosa Huerta paddles his canoe across the Cienega de Santa Clara one bright, warm fall day. The cienega, a 14,000-acre lake and marshland, lies near where the Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California in Mexico. Thick rows of cattails and tasseltopped reeds line the shore, providing habitat for the endangered Yuma clapper rail. The cienega’s shallow waters hold tilapia, catfish, carp, and largemouth bass, as well as desert pupfish, another endangered species. Overhead appear widgeons, cormorants, terns, pelicans, and herons. “This is the largest wetland in the delta,� says Hinojosa, a PhD candidate in wildlife biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson and director of Sonoran Desert conservation for Pronatura, a Mexican environmental group, of the Colorado River Delta. “It’s very important for birds....Water is needed to maintain these places.� Today, the Cienega de Santa Clara has plenty of water. But the cienega and the larger Colorado River Delta are threatened. Proposed actions in the United States and Mexico could significantly reduce the flow of water into the delta, increase its salinity, and alter the natural vegetation. At the same time, drought has lowered water levels in upstream reservoirs, eliminating, at least for now, the occasional floods the delta needs to maintain and extend the partial recovery of the 1980s and 1990s. Whether the delta and cienega can maintain that recovery depends as much on resolving very complex water issues in both countries as it does on nature.
Published in BioScience, volume 54, issue 5, on pages 386 - 386, in 2004.