MEXICO: Dairy farming threatens Mexico's rare desert oasis
- 00:00:12
- ITN Source
MEXICO: Dairy farming threatens Mexico's rare desert oasis
Dairy farming is endangering an ancient oasis in Mexico's Great Chihuahua desert that scientists say helps them understand Earth, extraterrestrial life and global warming. International biologists have warned that farmers could make the warm water Cuatro Cienegas lagoons in northern Mexico extinct by the end of the decade if they keep tapping underground water supplies to grow green alfalfa leaves to feed dairy cows, international biologists say. Benigno Vasquez used to be one of those farmers. Now, seeing the effects firsthand, he has turned into an activist striving to contain the proliferation of alfalfa in Coahuila state near Texas. "Right now Cuatro Cienegas is passing through a very difficult period in terms of water - that has already dried up. It is dried up because of the irrigators. The water springing from the canyon has completely dried out, and we are left without any work because many of the vineyards have no water," Vasquez said. Prized by researchers at NASA, the 170 cactus-ringed lakes at Cuatro Cienegas contain fish, snails, turtles, bacteria and unique living rock structures that offer a glimpse of the life forms that flourished on Earth 200 million years ago. A lack of phosphates in the desert means rock structures only found at Cuatro Cienegas, marooned when the sea retreated 100 million years ago, are unable to evolve further. The structures are called stromatolites - and are in fact ancient colonies of single-celled organisms - but now they are dying. "We cannot ignore that we have been incredibly luckily to have (this oasis) in our territory. As has happened in other places - such as with the Galapagos Islands for example where Ecuador has done some very notable work to preserve this area but at the same time generate benefits - I think we can do the same thing here in Mexico, in the case of the Cuatro Cienegas," said scientist Jose Sarukhan, one of Mexico's most renown biologists and former rector of the country's biggest state university UNAM. Scientists at NASA say understanding Cuatro Cienegas may help us know how the Earth developed and hold clues to whether other planets like Mars have primitive, extraterrestrial life. But a gap in Mexico's environmental legislation means that anyone can dig a well and extract unlimited amounts of water in the Cuatro Cienegas area, which lies on a huge underground water table driven up by geological fault lines deep beneath the earth. "We saw most of our sampling sites disappear and that's a tragedy because it's a very, very unique site, within the Cuatro Cienegas site already, so we cannot endanger it, we cannot play with it. We change the way we use water in Cuatro Cienegas or this amazing time machine we have in front disappears. It depends on the water and we are thirsty," said Valeria Souza, a Mexican biologist leading a international group of scientists to pressure the Mexican government to protect Cuatro Cienegas. Mexico's federal government and wealthy landowners however deny Cuatro Cienegas is at risk. Officials at the environmental ministry say they monitored 13 lagoons since 2003 and registered no change in water levels. But the scientists dispute that saying one entire lagoon dried out six months ago and was briefly replaced by wild flowers. Winter rains have refilled the shallow cobalt pool, but the stromatolites have not recovered.
ITN Source | February 23, 2007
