Slow Baja - Talking Trash And Conservation With Zach Plopper Of WILDCOAST.ORG

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

In our second conversation with Zach Plopper, Associate Director of WILDCOAST.org, we learn about the exciting new trash collection project on the Tijuana River. With funding by the Benioff Ocean Initiative, WILDCOAST has installed a 100-foot-long trash-skimming boom, which has stopped more than 10,000 pounds of plastic and waste destined for the Pacific Ocean. Plopper relates the project's challenges and opportunities, including a plan to repurpose some waste into playground structures and park furniture. His enthusiasm for conservation is infectious and comes through loud and clear. He delivers updates on several WILDCOAST projects, including; the Million Mangrove Mission, a study of coral in Mexico's Pacific Ocean Marine Parks, sea turtle nesting sites in Oaxaca, and protecting 38-miles of the Valle de Los Cirros (Seven-Sisters) region of the Central Baja Coast. Visit WILDCOAST.org here Follow WILDCOAST on Instagram Follow WILDCOAST on Facebook

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Hey, I want to tell you about your new must-have accessory for your next Baja trip. Benchmark Maps has released a beautiful, beautiful Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas. It's a 72-page large format book of detailed maps and recreation guides that makes the perfect planning tool for exploring Baja. Pick yours up at Benchmark Maps.com. Sultry sounds of Zach Plopper on K-P-U-C. All right, well, I think we're pretty good here.

Cool. Zach, introduce yourself. Zach Plopper, Associate Director of Wild Coast. All right, well, we know who you are. Hey, Zach, thanks for making a few minutes for me this morning. We're sitting by the... Well, maybe you should describe it. This is your new project.

Yeah, so this is the Sandegeto River, right where it meets the Pacific Ocean. This is a coastal wetland here in San Diego County that Wild Coast is working with some local partners to restore, to bring back its ecological function and improve climate resilience on the coastline in the state. region and as well as for all the incredible wildlife, the birds, fish. It's a really neat area. And we are right across the water from the Delmar Racetrack. It's right there. Yep. This is one of those unique urban wetlands that we have. Fortunately, we have them left here in Southern California, a few of them. But even when they're in the middle of the city, they still serve a huge purpose. A lot of them sink a lot of carbon, atmospheric carbon. These are blue carbon ecosystem. So you have salt marsh and seagrass that captures carbon out of the atmosphere

and sinks at all the sediment around it. And so really important, not just for the wildlife, but also for fighting climate change, just protecting even these little urban pocket wetlands that we have. Awesome. Well, you have a brand new office because you're working right here and got a chance to tour that this morning. So Wild Coast is doing good stuff all over. I'm always on your site, Checking out all the new work you're doing and the thing. Yesterday I was in Tijuana and, well, there's a fish jumping. Holy Toledo. There's another one.

Awesome. Sorry, folks. Easily distracted by shiny fish jumping out of water. Wildlife's coming to say hello. Foot long fish popping up to say hello to Zach. Hey, so yesterday I was in Tijuana having tacos with my guys and my friends, Javi and Polo at Baja Adventures. And you have a huge project going on there. You've got a trash boom that's skimming all this trash that would have just gone right out into the ocean.

Yep. So tell me about how that came about and what's going on. Give me an update. Yep. Yeah. So Wild Coast has been active improving the ecology as best we can in the Tijuana River, San Diego, Tijuana, border region for 20 years now. There's a huge problem of cross-border flows of sewage and trash in that area. area, that impacts the Tijuana River estuary.

That's this massive, incredible coastal estuary. The last undivided coastal estuary left in Southern California. There's not a freeway or railroad tracks going through the middle of it. And then right offshore is Tijuana River, Mouth State Marine Conservation Area. California's southernmost marine protected area. Offshore of that, the Coronado Islands, part of the islands of the islands of the Pacific, Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. So it's right at this apex of all these incredible protected places. But tons of wildlife, spiny lobster, dolphins. On occasion, there's eastern tropical,

Pacific, orca whales will swim through the lineup at the Tijuana Slews. So really incredibly biodiverse area, but it's really impacted by a lot of waste that's coming across the border. two-thirds of the Tijuana River watersheds on the Mexico side, which mostly is at a higher elevation than the San Diego U.S. side. So the whole catchment carries everything from Ticcate, Tijuana, down across the channelized river bottom, and then into the Tijuana River Estuary. It crosses the border into the U.S. just west of the city of Tijuana between Tijuana and Plias de Tijuana, which is the coastal portion of the city. So we've been doing wetland restoration, we've been doing volunteer cleanups, we've been working with decision makers on both sides of the border to bring investment and to helping to solve this problem. And it's not only impacting the wildlife and the ecology and the ecosystem services there, but also people's ability to access and enjoy these areas. This is surrounded by park poor, underserved communities that unfortunately their only open space locally is.

severely impacted by pollution, water quality issues on the border that most the world is aware of these days in Imperial Beach. Great trails are impacted by all the sewage, and it's just not necessarily a safe place to play, but it's a place set aside for people to play and for wildlife to flourish. So we've been doing everything we can. And then we applied for funding in 2019 to the Beniof Ocean Initiative at UC Santa Barbara to stop. up to a quarter of the plastics, the single-use plastic waste, from crossing the border into the Tijuana River estuary and ultimately into the Pacific Ocean.

And we got that funding in 2019. Took us about a year to figure out how we were going to do this. And we decided that building a trash boom, so about a 100 foot long device that goes across a concrete sediment basin in one of the tributary canyons, a major canyon that feeds into the Tijuana River. It's called Los La Rellis Canyon. There's about 60,000 people that live in that canyon. Very few services. There's a lot of people living completely off the grid. There's very little sewage

treatment infrastructure and waste collection. And unfortunately, a huge amount of single-use plastics are consumed on the regular. And a lot of that stuff is just discarded under the hillsides and then washes down the sides into the canyon and then across the border into the U.S. So we figured if we can intercept this before it crosses the border, we can keep it from getting into the ocean, then figure out what do we do with all this waste? So we got permits in late 2019, I'm sorry, 2020, we finally got the permits from the municipality to install the boom. and we did so successfully in January of this year, right before it started raining,

like literally the day before we got this thing installed. And seven months into the project, it's captured about 10,000 pounds of ocean-bound, ultimately, you know, what would be ocean-bound plastic waste. And so this is a year that's had very, very little rain. 10,000 pounds, I've seen the photos. I mean, you can see them Wild Coast on Facebook, Wild Coast. You're everywhere.

your wildcoast.org, correct? Wildcoast.org. And then obviously, Instagram, Facebook. But the photos are amazing. You've got all this stuff, and there's been very, very little rain. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a blessing and a curse, right?

We need rainfall desperately in California for that project, though. You know, part of me. It was glad it's stopped just so we could get this under control. Those rainfalls are just totally catastrophic in that area in terms of all the stuff. picks up and takes across from, you know, disease to tangible physical waste. So no easy feat getting through the bureaucracies on both sides of the border to get this done

and find some money from Mark Benioff in the Ocean Fund. That's amazing. And it's working. Are you amazed? Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, it's not something that we're experts in, but that's the way Wild Coast operates is if we identify a problem, you know, and we think we have a solution, we'll go for it and then try it out. And most times we're successful. We have a great team of 20, both in California and in Mexico. We have a full-time project coordinator, Rosario, in Tijuana, who's absolutely amazing. And then Faye Creveshé on our Communications and Policy Director here in California. And together with other members of our team, we're making this work

with some additional support from local groups and partners in Tijuana. You know, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser down to Baja, and when we go, we go with Baja Bound Insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use, Baja Bound Insurance, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Hey, do you have a 4x4? You love off-road racing. You've got to join Slow Baja in the Nora 500.

It's Ensenada to Ensenada three great days, October 7th through 10th. Kurt LaDuke, Off-road Hall of Famer, leads the class. If we can do it in our old truck, you can do it. Get your street legal four-by-four, get into the safari class, and I'll see you in Ensenada. More info at nora.com. That's www.n-O-R-R-A-com or on Slow Baja. I realize you haven't figured out where all the trash is going to be re-use, repurposed, recycled, but give me some highlights of what's been happening.

Give me some numbers of what's been sent off for recycling. Yeah, so we've been able to actually pull that 10,000 pounds out of that, of that basin that was stopped by the boom. And I don't know the exact percentages offhand, but a portion of that is taken to the landfill. Let me stop you right there. 10,000 pounds by hand. Yeah, by hand. This is all, and so you're dealing also with local employment. You're creating jobs.

You always hear about, you know, gas and oil projects create all these jobs. blood. You're creating real jobs for real people. Yep. Right there. Yep. People that desperately need some assistance. We're aware of the dangers associated with that and really donning all the eyes and crossing the T's and working our staff out of Ensonata is really playing a big role and helping manage, you know, the personnel and that side of things. But, yeah, it is providing opportunity. You know, ultimately we want to face it. out single use plastic consumption and so we don't you know we're aware of that part of it too but in the meantime it's let's just get this stuff out of here and then the response that we're getting from the

community is tremendously positive people are really really supportive of it you know they they don't want this stuff there if they are provided with an alternative they'd be happy to to go down that road so that's the part that i was kind of you know thought was going to be the most challenging and it is challenging, getting that local support and buy-in. But we have a great team that was really part of the fabric of those communities that was able to work with local people. And it's been great. So I cut you off on the numbers. You're rolling through. So you've got a portion of it that's going to landfill, which, you know, here, that's where it would have gone initially. Yeah, of course. You know, rather than just dumped in the backyard, washed down a canyon and out to the ocean.

Yeah. So that's proper. And then there is national recycling. We talked about that a little bit. So there's a portion of it going off to recycling. And tell me about that. Yeah. So a portion of it's working with a private company in Mexico, Mexico called Icosi. And that stuff is being taken. Unfortunately, right now, it's outside of the state of Baja California for recycling just because there isn't that capacity to recycle single-use plastics in in Baja California or in Tijuana. and Sonata at the scale that we need. And that's really a big part of this project moving forward, is how do we stimulate a market for recycling that's locally. So right now, another portion is being recycled. And then the rest of it's being repurposed. So it's actually being reused for pieces or building blocks for community parks and other sort of small-scale infrastructure project. So we're right now just kind of putting the blueprints together with the local engineer in Tijuana to create two community parks and playgrounds that'll reuse a lot of the

waste tires and a lot of the bottles kind of in different materials of the play equipment there, including swings and teeter totters and stuff for children in communities that really need that, too. You know, there's limited outdoor open recreation space that's safe. And so we're hoping to be able to support that. So, you know, another opportunity, we're really, looking at is how do we get kind of the equipment on site that exists out there in the world to do on-site recycling. So actually shred the stuff that we can, create building blocks for materials that can then be exported and maybe stimulate, you know, some sort of business opportunity for the community that way. Amazing. So, Zach, I promised you that we'd be brief today. It's a work

day for you or it's a Tuesday morning. And I would love, since we're here, run me through some of the highlights of what else Wild Coast is doing in Baja and in Mexico. Sure. So there's that's going on. And then we're really moving forward on our one million mangrove mission. So we've planted about 120,000 mangrove seedlings in San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja, California, Sur. And we're looking to, well, we're going to be expanding that this year, planning an additional up to 40,000 seedlings and exploring mangrove restoration opportunities in Magdalena Bay, other areas of the Gulf of California, and then down in Oaxaca and southern Mexico as well.

And let's tell listeners why mangroves are so important. Sure, yeah. So mangroves are important for all the wildlife that's in these areas. It really is like what makes Magdalena Bay in San Ignacio Lagoon, what they are, which is habitat for gray whales, huge, tremendous importance for migratory birds. sea turtles, fisheries, just a whole bunch of wildlife depends on the existence of these mangroves. They also buffer the coastline and the communities there against hurricanes, which we're seeing kind of increasingly more intense and taking different paths than they did in the past.

We attribute that to climate change. And then they also pull huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere. So they actually, just like I mentioned this lagoon that we're saying, sitting next to their blue carbon ecosystem. So they capture carbon, they store it in all the sediment that's around these, and they store carbon at a rate up to 50 times more than rainforests and forests on land. So they are protecting them, restoring them,

is a natural climate solution. And we've protected about 8,500 acres of mangrove forests in northwest Mexico, and working on another 31,000 acres throughout the Gulf and other parts of the peninsula. So that works going really well. And the project, one million mangroves. One million, yeah. And you're about 10%, 10%.

We're about, yeah, more than 10% into it. Amazing, okay. Keep rolling here. Okay. So seven sisters, we got more than 51,000 acres of land purchase. We're going to get a train here in a minute. We've purchased about 38 miles of coastline. between Puerto Canoas down to near Santa Rosalia,

protecting all the bays, points, wetlands in that region, maintain open public access so people can still enjoy that, but it is set aside for conservation, and actually recognized by the Mexican federal government as a protected area. So it's not just under wild coast ownership, but actually, you know, totally destined towards conservation. Take a little break for this thing.

break for the train. Hey, I really appreciate it. Good stuff, great information. Yeah, yeah. Take a breath, man. You're an encyclopedia of, it sounds like you like your work. There's a lot on autopilot. I took my first domestic train a week or 10 days ago when I came back from Oregon.

Yeah, took the Amtrak overnight. Yeah, it was, you know, kind of sad. You just see so many homeless camps. shocking. I mean, shocking. Yeah, it's so bad. Hey, we're back. The train, the coaster has passed, and we're back with Zach. So you were talking about seven sisters and the work you're doing there.

Yep, so that works going great. Focusing kind of less on the acquisition side, more on the management side. So some more signage to let people know, this, you know, best visitation practices. We have one ranger that works out of Faroe San Jose that patrols the northern properties and working on getting someone

similar for the southern properties as well. So yeah, if you go through that area, tread lightly. Let us know. Send me pictures. It's a hard place to get to that don't get to enough. So I always like to hear updates from folks going down there. Sounds like a good slow Baja podcast going out with your ranger checking it out for a couple of days. Yeah, we could do a five-day slow Baja podcast and just trickle our way down the coastline. I'm available. Yeah. And then our coral reef work is is going really well. We just published the first baseline study for the conservation status of coral reefs in the Mexican Pacific, so representing about 800,000 acres of national parks that have coral reefs within them, so Cabo Pumo, Spiritu Santo, Walthuco National Park down in Wauaca.

And there was very little research on this whole kind of network of national parks in the coral reefs within them on are they doing okay, what species are present, what might be the threats to these, and then how do we guide conservation or management to ensure that these coral reefs continue to thrive? And so that's going to be on our website here by the end of the day to day, very shortly. But it's a great document that kind of takes you through these seven different national parks and talks all about the wildlife and the state of the coral reefs there. What we have found is that these coral reefs are more resilient to climate change. There's very few bleaching events. And so what that means to us is we have to really protect them against all the other stuff.

So anchoring vessels, for example, dropping anchor on the reefs that they're there to enjoy. So we've installed mooring buoys in Waltuco and in Espiritu Santo National Park, a lot of outreach with the tourism outfitters that are there and capacity trainings with them, providing information to the tourists and then working with the National Park staff in both these areas to get them up to speed on what they have and how they can help, you know, improve the management of these areas. And so that's managed out of our La Paz office, Rebecca Melendez, who's our Coral Reef Program Manager, and then we have a new coordinator working on coral reefs out of Walthoolco. So that's going super well as in addition to the mangroves in Los Cirios. And then

We're still getting ready, actually, for probably an intense sea turtle nesting season, Danuaka in southern Mexico. So working on the 9.3-mile Morayuta Beach between Wal-Tulco and Selena Cruz, as well as a beach called Escobia, which is between Port Escondito and in Wal-Tulco, monitoring every single one of those mass nestings in which tens to hundreds of thousands of sea turtles come to lay their eggs there. a lot of outreach and education with youth in the communities there. We got some new signage going in to attract the tourism to the Sea Turtle camps there to show, you know, there's things that they can get involved with, support and volunteer.

And so that works also going really exciting. So, yeah, busy days down in Mexico and then California, we got a lot of restoration work going on. We're working with the state to help manage half a million acres of marine protected areas off our coast. And so it's, yeah, 2021's a busy year. And yeah, we're running. Well, there's a gleam in your eye and a smile on your face. And I just want to say thanks again, Zach, for making some time for Slow Baja and giving us an update on your amazing conservation work.

So best ways for people to find out what you're up to? Yep, wildcoast.org. We can both visit our website in English and Spanish there. I've got tons of resources. Our blog's really active to kind of take people on more of a visual journey to these areas. We're on our Instagram. It's got a lot of great photos and updates. That's at Wild Coast Coastalvalanche and as well as Facebook. So and Twitter, we're pretty active there. We'll have some virtual events coming up at the end of the year so people can plug in from around the

world and learn a little bit more about what we're doing and see how they can get involved. So, yeah, keep an eye out. All right, Jack. Thanks a bunch. Yeah, thanks, Michael. Slow Baja's wardrobe is provided by Taylor Stitch, responsibly built for the long haul, Taylor Stitch makes clothes that wear in, not out. Wherever your adventure takes you, Taylor Stitch has you covered. Check them out at tailorstitch.com. Hey, you guys know what to do. Please help us by subscribing, sharing, rating, all that stuff.

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