Slow Baja - WILDCOAST's Zach Plopper On Conserving Wildlife and Wild Lands in Mexico

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

Zachary Plopper is the Associate Director of WILDCOAST, a 501c3 non-profit organization that conserves coastal and marine ecosystems and wildlife in the United States, Cuba and Mexico. An avid surfer since his childhood in Solana Beach, California, Plopper started competing at age twelve and was sponsored by the time he was 13. He competed professionally during high school and won the National Scholastic Surfing Association’s collegiate state champion while attending UCSD. A few years later, while in grad school at UCLA, he was surfing Trestles and met Serge Dedina -the Executive Director of WILDCOAST. As they talked and surfed, Dedina suggested that Plopper write his graduate thesis on a new WILDCOAST conservation opportunity in the Valle de los Cirios (Seven-Sisters) region of Baja California. Plopper’s 76-page thesis became the guiding document on the project, outlining the region’s threats and opportunities, and in 2008 -a full-time job for Plopper. Working with local landowners, Mexico’s National Commission for Protected Areas, and international funders, his efforts led to creating the Valle de Los Cirios Pacific Coast protected area, one of the largest private protectorates of coastal land in North America. In this conversation, we cover Plopper’s eleven years of work at WILDCOAST and some of the lessons learned from his years of travel in Baja’s remotest regions. Visit the WILDCOAST website 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. Slow Baja is brought to you by the Baja XL rally. The Baja XL is the largest and longest amateur off-road rally on the Baja Peninsula. It's 10 epic days, L.A. to Cabo, back to L.A., mostly on dirt. For an adventure of a lifetime, you've got to check out the BajaXL rally.

More information at BajaXL.org and on Facebook at the Baja XL Rally News and Support Group. It's coming up, January 2021. Be there. Thanks for tuning in to Slow Baja. It's Michael Emery and I am here in Rancho Santa Fe with Zach Plopper. It's a beautiful hot day. Zach has pilfered a couple of his dad's Dosekis for us. So we're sitting outside. We're in bacon and the sun. I'm going to have a cold beer. So, Zach, you're going to do all the talking. Awesome. Thanks, Michael.

Yeah, so Wild Coast, we're an international team. Our missions to conserve coastal marine ecosystems and address climate change through natural solutions. And we're a 20-year-old organization. We're founded in 2000 by Dr. Serge Dedena, who continues to be our executive director today. And we're by national organization. We're based in the United States and Mexico. Our U.S. headquarters are in Imperial Beach. And then our Mexico headquarters are in Ensenada.

And then we also have an office in La Paz and down in Wal-Tulco, in Wauaca, and southern Mexico. We're right now a team of about 20, full-time staff. And we carry out our mission really in three ways. We establish and manage protected areas. So setting up these large, incredible, wild ecosystem-based protected areas. We advanced policy in the U.S. and Mexico that supports the conservation in those sites. So make sure that they're actually, you know, the resources there are being protected.

And then thirdly is working with local communities in those areas to be the stewards of the wildlife and the resources that are there because they are the experts. And so we depend really on their expertise and their drive to carry out our mission. And you came to this, I'm assuming, through a background in surfing. Did you surf your way into a job here? Sort of, yeah. All right. I mean, let's be honest. Sorry, so we talked a little bit about that off air that you surfed in at UC San Diego,

and I know that you have a background as a competitive surfer in your youth. So jump into that a little bit, and then tell me how that led to what you're doing now or didn't and tell me where you're working in Baja first, and I know you're doing great work in Wautucco and Wajaka with the turtle. So just dive into telling us where you're, how surfing led to your interest in conservation? Absolutely. Yeah.

So having grown up by the coast in Salana Beach, my parents don't surf, my dad's from the Midwest. My mom was from inland, northern California, but so fortunate to grow up walking distance. from the ocean in the 80s and with a glory days of the San Diego coastline, tons of sand, the cliffs weren't all armored, you know, not a ton of people, especially surfers.

And around eight or nine years old, I just kind of gravitated to the water and standing up on a board and riding those waves. And that really kind of has dictated the direction of my life ever since. I didn't apply to a university east of the five freeway. So UCSD is an undergrad. I started competing when I was about 12, got my first sponsor at 13, free clothes, paid trips, all sorts of awesome stuff for a young teenager, surfer, and started competing professionally during high school, doing some professional events. But it was always valued education. And so, So UCSD was a logical place where I could go get a great education, continue to surf, obviously, right there at Blacks Beach, was our training ground, one of the best beach breaks in the world. And all of my studies, I kind of had the environment indirectly and the ocean kind of in the background there.

I started off as a biology major transition to urban planning and really interested around our coastlines as well. I lived in northern Spain for two years as an undergrad in the northern region of Cantabria, just outside of the Basque region. And that's where I really got kind of an awakening to the concept of urban planning and how we can structure our built environment, and that can really, for better or worse, dictate a lot of how people behave socially. And seeing, you know, a lot of do's and don'ts on how we can build our cities, especially coastal cities, which a lot of places in Europe have done a really good job of.

And then kind of relating that to what we've done in Southern California, which we have some very good success stories and preserving access to our coastline. But in terms of natural resources, I don't think we've done a good enough job. Hence a lot of the issues. We have to confront now with sand replenishment and sea walls and a whole host of issues. And then I studied at UCLA continuing to surf. and visit the ocean, which then almost narrowed my focus even more. And that's where I learned about Wild Coast as a graduate student. I had a really close friend of mine who I actually had lived in Spain with and studied at UCSD with.

His name is Ben McHugh. He's now the executive director of outdoor outreach. And he was working for Wild Coast as his first job outside of school. And I started volunteering and learning more about the organization. And as a second year grad student, I met Saraje Steadine. out at trestles one day. So we were obviously there surfing, one of Southern California's most iconic spots.

And we started talking about school, and he was wondering what I was studying or going to write my thesis on, because I had to write a thesis to graduate. And he suggested that they're starting to develop this land conservancy project in Baja California, and perhaps I'd like to take a role in outlining how we'd move forward with that,

or how Wild Coast would try to protect this region. And so a 76-page document on all the threats and opportunities for a very unique desert wilderness coastline called the Vidal Assyriaos Pacific Coast or in the surf world, the Seven Sisters region. So about a third of the way down the peninsula. That actually turned into a guiding document for protecting that region and in 2008 my first job. And if I read about that correctly, is that 52,000 acres? 52,000 acres and about 37 miles at coastline. 37 continuous continuous. Not continuous.

Our largest continuous stretch is about 11 miles. And yeah, so my first, so I was hired in 2008 as the Wildlands Conservation Manager. So our Wildlands project is working in these wilderness coastal areas in Mexico. And this is one project within that program. And, yeah, that job entailed site visits, negotiating with landowners and raising the money to be able to acquire through direct land purchases or also set up what's called conservation easements. So those are voluntary designations by a landowner saying we're going to conserve this land.

And so piece by piece, we started protecting the most at-risk points, bays. Ironically, the places that surfers love are the same places that the fishermen love are the same places that developers love because there's very few real habitable parts of that coastline. You need some shelter from the wind and the swell activity. So if you want to build a marina, it's really the same place that, you know, people are surfing and fishermen are launching their pangas from. And that was one of the big threats, too, that whole plan of building marinas up and down both sides of the Baja Peninsula. I think they eventually did it on the Sea of Cortez side to some degree.

And one on the Pacific side. Yeah, the Pacific side was largely stopped due to people like you, right? Yep, yep, Wild Coast. This was just before I got. hired but played a pivotal role in stopping with the Escaleronautica project or notical ladder, which envisioned about 22 marinas from the border down to the Cape and then all the way back up the Gulf side. And it just grossly overestimated the demand for boaters to take a yacht to, you know, which far flung reaches without any services at all. The one that did get built on the Pacific side is in a town called Santa Rosaliaita.

and that was a small fishing village and a beautiful sandy giant headland. And it was, you know, for these developers was the prime target to build a marina. And the idea was to create a land bridge. So a boater could go down, hook up to a truck, take their boat across the peninsula, and dump it off on the Gulf side. Without sailing all the way around. Exactly. Or with the winds maybe motoring around. And the project due to being, you know, overestimating the demand and a number of,

and just choosing poor locations for a harbor because that thing just filled up with sand immediately. It has about six miles of sand dunes north of it and a persistent northwest wind. So it's just a constant deposit of sand into this thing. And it's been, you know, it was abandoned immediately after construction and still sits there today. Yeah. I've seen people tinker around with, you know, watering the palm trees or doing this or that, but it's defunct. Yeah, we saw one years ago, almost 10 years ago now, quite underutilized on the Sierra Cortez side, I think, in Loretto. And, you know, it was fine.

We used, you know, the bar and the bathrooms and that sort of thing. But it was like, who, somebody built something, as my dad would say, a silver saddle for a jackass. Exactly. Yeah. And with that project came a lot of speculation. So that whole region, landowners were promised, you know, millions and the golf courses are going to come and the resorts are going to come. And if anybody knows that stretch of central Baja, it is bone dry. There are no services.

You know, infrastructure is nil. And it's just not a logical place for that sort of development. So we came in, well, let's conserve it instead. Right. And so tell me about how you got there, how many trips you made, and the challenges of, doing the actual rubber meets the road conservation work with the folks you had to deal with. It must have just been daunting. Yeah, well, it's, you know, I was 27 years old, so I've definitely had the energy and passion,

which I still have, enthusiasm and vigor to happily take 10 trips down there a year. It's about a 13-hour drive. you know, we would typically do that straight down. Very few trips by myself. I'd always make sure I had a partner with me. But, you know, the elements that involved was, you know, one, raising the money, which a lot of that funding came from private foundations on the U.S. side as part of a concerted effort to protect what's left of northwest Mexico. So from San Ignacio Lagoon, Magdalena Bay, the Gulf, and then this area was very important to us,

and we really pressured the funders to consider this an area worth saving. We had support from Scott Hewlett from the Surfers Journal and a lot of other folks that were really passionate about this region and helped us kind of elevate it to grab the attention of funders so we could raise the money to be able to start working in that area. And so, yeah, it was endless years, five years of, you know, I'd say I did the mathematics of how many miles I actually did and hours on the road. And it's definitely in the thousands in those trips down there. We've been met with wild weather. There was a couple El Nino winters that spent a lot of time down there when those roads get wet. Yeah, you're on dirt roads most of the time. Yeah.

Did you need four-wheel drive much? Absolutely. 100%. Okay. Yeah. We still do a very nice Toyota Tacoma that got us over the ruts and out there. Just going to ask. That's the tool for that job.

Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. As well as very reliable on the highways as well, which to me is a much more dangerous stretch of road than those dirt roads. But we safely, you know, we had very few mishaps. We're as an organization, since we have so many staff in various locations in the field throughout Mexico and California, safety's always been our number one protocol. And so we're not driving at night, very detailed itinerary, satellite phone, checking in.

You can never overdo it. That includes, you know, the supplies that we bring down there and enough water and food for twice as long as our intended stay because I had heard stories. We worked very closely with a lot of the landowners, the ranchers, the fishermen, the Aheado members that are in that region and broken down on the side of the road for four

days before another car drove by. So we listened to them and really took that stuff seriously. I had caravand with volunteers and other partners that didn't take it seriously and more often than not they were stranded on the side of the road and getting towed or a ride back to El Rosari

to get a new tire. And, you know, it's, they, hopefully they all learn from their mistakes. Yeah. And so with all that preparation and the logistics, focus on the logistics and with a good, solid vehicle like a Toyota Tacoma, probably none better than that. How did it work out for you with all those miles? Flawlessly? Do you have a couple of stories to tell?

Yeah, yeah. You know, overall, pretty flawlessly, I must say, this was, you know, you. You know, 2008 to 2012, 2013. So this was during the economic crisis. Yeah, some years that people got very, very afraid to go to Baja. Right. Which meant a lot fewer people on the road and kind of a lot less attention as well. So we were visiting, you know, I was surfing San Miguel and Ensenado with my boss with no one out for for a couple years.

Different story now. You know, for better or for worse, tourism really suffered during all that. There's a couple industries that propped up in Ensenada, the wine industry. the beer, the food, all that kind of, I think, grew out of locals. Yeah, I think not catering to drunk gringoes. Exactly. All of a sudden, people in Tijuana decided that they could do something for themselves. And it turned out to be, in my opinion, a lot more interesting, at least to me,

than what I had experienced in the 80s as a college kid going to San Diego State and going down to Tijuana or Ensonata. Right. It just didn't seem all that interesting. Once you get that first monkey on a surfboard, ceramic bank that's, you know, it just wasn't that interesting, but it's very interesting to me now. Yeah. You know, I think there's the food and the drink and the craft beer and the wine region. It's amazing. Yeah. And they've been, you know, tying that into conservation. There's a company

in Aguamala, or in Ensenada called Aguamala, a brewery, and they support our work. We've worked with some of the wineries up in the Vita Guadalupe as well, as well as some of the restaurants. So they, a lot of them really value. you know, the fisheries that they have offshore, kind of the natural beauty of that bay and beyond. But yeah, and back to your question, if I learned early, one trip in particular was one of my first trips down there, and it was up to me to assemble this trip. And in the end, we were caravaning with way too many people to go to one of these areas. And it was in the, it was in fall, and we get down to a spot called Punta Cuccio, which is within that

on Bidal-Syros Pacific Coast and set up camp. And after driving for 13 hours, you know, start to enjoy the evening a little bit. And the wind started to pick up out of the east, northeast, which, and then we start talking, oh, there's supposed to be a Santa Ana at home back in Southern California. I wonder that's how it's going to affect us down there. Within an hour, it was deafening wind, like a 747 was right next to us. Everyone retreats to their tents, completely tent-taccoed within an hour. were stakes ripped out of the ground, surfboards blowing away.

I retreated to the back of the Tacoma, which was rocking back and forth so much that the spare tire that I was sleeping with back there was sliding back and forth across the bed of this thing. I thought the whole truck was going to get flipped over into the ocean. And I've been in two hurricanes and this wind was... Good thing it wasn't a Volkswagen camper. Exactly. It would have been gone. Yeah, the wind was beyond anything I'd ever experienced before. Definitely, you know, hurricane strength.

Didn't sleep a wink. next morning it's like we can't work in this we were going to go you know do some site surveys and and whatnot and got back in the car and drove home so 26 hours for a no night's sleep um i learned from that of what kind of weather at least in the dry weather season to avoid and since have avoided a number of trips down because there was that um you know those the strong santa anas that are called it's a north day there and that'll blow all the way down the entire peninsula i saw waves and la paus to November's ago from a wind like that that had blown down the entire, you know, 800-mile fetch of the Gulf of California. So actual waves in the in-ways and people surfing. Inland,

Onsea of Cortez. Amazing. Yeah. Wow. So it's a real deal down there. It's a windy environment. And similarly, another trip was during an El Nino predicted rain event that just whip through there turn the roads into mud we were actually down there with a donor who had flown and a sesna down to um just outside of catavina catavina and got dropped off and then we picked him up um i had to go down on a separate trip two weeks before to make sure the landing strip was suitable for a plane to go down and then so those two trips within a month down there and uh it started raining darkest clouds you could imagine, and I'm thinking this plane's not going to come get, you know, make it in here to pick this guy up, and he's going to have to drive with us for older gentlemen.

He would have been up for the ride for sure, but we wanted to create a seamless of a trip for him as possible to get him excited about funding that region and conservation work there. And we finally made it to the runway. I figure we'll give him an hour and 55 minutes into our stay before I'm like, okay, we're going to get back in the car and drive home now. a tiny little break in the clouds and blue and a Cessna drops through the sky. Lans doesn't even stop. Get in, get in, get in, gets in, flies back.

Surges on that flight as well. And apparently it was a hell-raising flight home, even as they got through San Diego. And we beat them driving, getting back. They had to fly through Mexicali. I think they then had a land at Brownfield. And then finally up at Palomar and Carlsbad. Crazy. Crazy.

So getting back to your conservation work. You know, I live in the San Francisco area, so north of us, the coast, Stinson Beach, Sonoma Coast. So much of that has been thoughtfully preserved by the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, who just does these great work. And having lived in that region from the time I was a child to now, very little of the rural parts of Marin and Sonoma have changed much. And that could have been, you know, chocked with two, three, five million dollar house after two, three, five million dollar house for, for miles. But luckily, somebody figured out how to get that protected and how to convince farmers, ranchers, mainly cattle ranchers, that, you know, they can run their cattle, but they can never, they can never sell these properties. How do you figure out what you're doing in Baja, in these rural locations,

where, you know, that everybody there, to me, looks like they're at a subsistence level at best. How do you tell them to preserve this? Yeah, that's really good question. I mean, I think for one, those communities really value their access and the natural resources that I depend on. I think a place like Punta Brejos

down in Viscayino Biosphere Reserve is a great example of that. It's one of Mexico's strongest fishing cooperatives, super well-managed fisheries, the kids surf, it's eco-tourism hub for surfers and bird lovers and nature enthusiasts. And they really grasp that, you know, without the access and that natural beauty and those natural resources, that their whole dynamic would change.

They came to us with the threats to San Ignacio, the lagoon and around Abrijos about the cruise ship terminals that wanted to go in there. How can we help defeat this stuff? Because they knew it would forever transform their way of life. I think that resonates to a lot of other areas as well. And we're seeing more and more, especially places like Puerto San Carlos near La Paz, across the peninsula from La Paz in Bayama Galena, where they really value the mangroves, the whales, the ecotourism.

and in some of the more far-flung remote areas, it still resonates. So the fishing cooperatives that we work with in, say, the Seven Sisters, Vidalas-Ros region, they want to be able to access those areas. A lot of them, their cooperative headquarters are in Ensenada. They're familiar with what's happened between Tijuana and Ensenada in terms of losing access to the coastline because of speculative development. I mean, there's more empty condo towers and half-finished buildings on that stretch than functioning businesses.

And what that does is it cuts access for the local community, for visitors, and it really impedes that area to fully realize its potential as a beautiful spot. It's incredible coastline that unfortunately has been lost. And that's what we want to try to protect

in these areas. And working very closely with those communities and a lot of the decisions made actually comes from those communities. and helping them get to that point where they have land security. So they might have had a contract on the back of a napkin that says that they own or can inhabit a particular area. But working with them so they actually own these areas.

That's the case with these easements. So get them title to that. And then work with them, okay, how can we, you can continue to live here, access this area, how can we help you protect it? And so really working in tandem with them on those. there's a lot more potential too, especially in those areas in terms of kind of very light ecotourism, maybe from the off-road community, from the surfing community, just from the nature lover,

Baja lover community, working more with those communities. And we're actually, we have two local rangers that come from those fish camps that are, you know, wild coast contractors, and they do surveillance and check on the properties, report anything back and regarding the signage that we have there or, you know, various threats that they see. And so they're compensated for that work as well. We'd love to expand that. I mean, that area, as you mentioned, we have about 55,000 acres of coastline, and that's kind of the next phase of that project is working on the management. So how is this as formal of a, you know, nature can, you know, conservancy as those areas in Marin County that you're talking about where it's clear as day.

This is a protected area. And here are the rules. You can visit it. but, you know, we have to tread lightly. Yeah, you can hike through it, but you can tread lightly. Exactly. So the communities that you work with. What's that like?

Obviously, you speak fluent Spanish, I'm assuming, after a couple years in Spain. Tell me about some of the fishing communities and some of these, just rural communities and the people that you've met along your path. Yeah, absolutely incredible. I've learned more from them than in my years in graduate school and undergrad learning about conservation. you know something that stands out that I love about about Baja

is the are the communities and the people especially in those you know salt of the earth areas and and they're so giving and so helpful that I feel less afraid

about breaking down in a car there sometimes than I do here you know it's they're they'll figure it out I've seen them a lot of you know just work miracles in terms of troubleshooting being able to communicate obviously really helps. But it's, you know, really opening yourself to conversing and spending the time to do it. That's something that a lot of American visitors will just blast through

those towns, a little wave and keep going. And, you know, I definitely was guilty of that as well, not spending enough time checking in. That's something in Mexico in general, culturally, there's always time to talk and stop and have a chat. And that's what allows that place to have such a, you know, the family fabric is so intact and so important, whereas they extend those arms to anybody, you know, in need. And if you choose to and take the time to engage, you're going to learn a lot. You're going to have a lifelong friend. You're going to get exposed to the different foods and the different places and stuff

you wouldn't be able to find on your own and figure out on your own. So, you know, after a few years driving through a fish camp like Faro San Jose, which a lot of surfers are probably familiar with. It's kind of the gateway to the northern seven sisters in a way. And, you know, got to the point where they're, you know, one guy in particular is running out of his house with fresh caught lobster, freshly cooked caught lobster as we're driving by. And, you know, you're in joy. And, you know, I can't replace those memories of anything at all. Yeah, we lived in, our family lived in kind of an extended vacation through Baja and then put our car on the ferry and went over to the mainland and lived in Zacatechus.

for another seven months or so. When I had twins who were two and they turned three there and then my older guy was four and turned five. And what our takeaway on that time was people there in Mexico, they have time but no money. They have time.

And then because the, we were right in a colonial, you know, world heritage, UNESCO town, but we lived in a, you know, an old 150-year-old adobe right in downtown. And, you know, there's sections, of floor that's not, you know, it's Adobe flooring, so it's dirt.

It's called it dirt. It's formed tiles, but it's dirt. And it's just different. People don't have air conditioning in their homes. They don't have flat screen TVs with Netflix. So they're out in the community. The community is so important. People are out.

And I really did feel like, you know, if you can just slow down a little bit and meet people on their own terms and have time to talk. And again, if somebody's throwing freshly cooked lobster at you, You ought to be thoughtful enough to stick around and tell you thanks and have a beer with them or something. Absolutely. And I think that's the pace of life that we live here just preclude some people from seeing those opportunities and taking those opportunities. And I think that's, for me, a little bit what Slow Baja is about. So coming back to somebody who maybe, you've obviously logged thousands and thousands of miles and been in some very remote areas driving dirt roads and four-wheel drive.

and whatnot. What advice do you have? I mean, you've met a lot of people. You've gone a lot of places in Baja. You flew down in small planes for your surfing stuff that we talked about previously. What are your takeaways? What's your advice?

Can you tell people about who maybe don't know about too much about Baja? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I mentioned before, number one is be safe. You know, at the driving at night, obviously drinking and driving, which you wouldn't want to do anywhere. but people often have a sense of too much freedom in a place like that. It's still someone else's home.

I've seen, you know, you think surfers often are the total environmentally conscious folks and many trips down there. You know, we've had to step in and say stuff to people that are leaving trash, that are ripping agave out of the ground as firewood. That is what bothers me, you know, almost the most in ripping, hundred-year-old plants out of the ground that are absolutely integral to the landscape there and serve a number of ecosystem functions, taking the time in those communities, getting your insurance, being insured, being safe. Through Baja Bound, call Jeff Hill. Jeff Hill and Baja

Bound support. Our work, Jeff, yeah, they have been an incredible supporter. They've really transformed that, you know, the whole landscape around car insurance in Mexico is where it's online. And you can learn a lot while you're on there getting your insurance as well. They've got a great site. So I would encourage, you know, people interested in exploring to look into that. Definitely learning about, you know, the history and not trying to bite off too much. You know, now I have two kids, two small children, a three-year-old, three-and-a-half-year-old and a two-year-old. And if we were to take a trip down there, which we want to do, I think we would take it very slow and see and enjoy some places that I haven't spent nearly enough time in. A lot of those,

little towns, you know, seemingly, if you just go get a place to stay and get some gas, has something really cool to offer as well, whether that's El Rosario, there's an amazing fossil museum across the street from the Pemex there that's in a man's home that has just incredible fossils from that area. Catavina, obviously, is an incredible thing to go check out, the oasis near there, the rock art as well. And then, and then obviously further south, there's so much more to see. And, you know, yeah, investing in those communities and really not being afraid. That's the, you know, the fear that a lot of people carry when they go. And especially with, you know, the military stops and stuff.

I mean, those are just young men doing their job. Those aren't the police. That is the military. And, you know, they have their routine checks. And in those situations, obviously, you know, be courteous. Be smart. Those are young kids from southern Mexico, Chiapas, Guajaka, really all over. I've had a lot of really incredible interactions.

with them and not one of them negative ever in my in my journeys down. Yeah, I'd really, yeah, be safe, take it slow, communicate. Also, you know, it's good to check in with your family or co-workers on the U.S. side to let them know where you are and take lots of pictures and tread lightly. Yeah, tread lightly. So that interesting, your comment about having to intervene in some poorly behaved surfer activity. I remember again on this trip that I took 20 years ago with my family and we were in Tos Santos

and then went down to Pescadero and, you know, somebody said, oh, you've got to watch the fishermen come in on the fisherman's beach. They race their pangas through the surf and right up onto the beach and it was pretty exciting. So, you know, we're mosing on down, driving down in our little minivan. And I think the turn from the road to the surfers beach was a couple miles of dirt. road to get down to the beach, lined four feet, five feet tall with trash. And so again, coming from, you know, where we lived in downtown San Francisco with municipal monopoly

trash pickup that we pay an arm and a leg for that comes, the guys come to our house and take the trash out, you just realize that's not part of the deal there. Right. I mean, they don't have that. So what do you do with the trash that you generate? What happens to that old washing machine? What happens to those car parts? What, I mean, this is why when you drive through rural America, how you see these things stacked up in people's yards. How do you go about in your work, your conservation work, treading on those customs, for lack of a better way? Yeah.

Yeah, we always, you know, when we're camping, it's always a pack in, pack out. So we take home every single thing with us. In some of those rural areas, some of the Ahedos have projects where they'll install trash cans. really in the middle of nowhere. And a lot of people choose to leave their waste in those sites, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're being collected

and in a windy environment like that. Often that trash just blows all over the desert. So we always take out everything that we bring in. On that, we try to bring in really, you know, in terms of plastics, especially, you know, less than, you know, we were conscious about the materials that we're bringing. But that stuff always comes home with us. And then when we're down, you know, more urban areas, La Paz, for example, in Sonata, Magdalena Bay, it's, yeah, it's just consuming lightly.

Unfortunately, you know, with water and stuff, it's, you know, there's a high dependency on bottled water there. But we always make sure that we got access to those big, you know, multi-gallon jugs. There's water stores in every town in Mexico where you can go get those filled for very cheap, rather than buying 35 avion bottles that, you know, you know, end up burned on the side of the road. But, yeah, that's always very, you know, on the top of our minds. And we encourage others to do the same. And research, you know, where you can, you know, these days with Google Maps and the Internet, you can find a water store in the smallest town in Mexico.

If you can find a sandbar and how the surf's breaking, you can certainly find the water store. Yeah. Hey, you mentioned Magdalena Bay. That place is just eating at me now. I kind of swung through there on a trip and off-roading trip in January of 2019. Lopez-Meteos, didn't really get to see anything, you know, in and out, got in late, left early. Tell me about Magdalena Bay. I know you're doing some work there.

I know you're working with the mangroves and whatnot, but how much time have you spent there? And what can you tell me about that area? Yeah, so Wild Coast has been really present there since the inception. We started training, working with the whale watching outfitters there. That's one of Baja's California gray whale breeding lagoons along with Scammon's and San Ignacio. and we, you know, improving their practices as ecotourism providers. And with that kind of slowly fostering relationship with the communities there, both Lopez-Metheos and further south and Puerto San Carlos,

we started our mangrove conservation work in about 2008 to try to protect the mangrove forests of northwest Mexico. So by law they're protected, but there's a lot of illegal deforestation that happens where stuff will literally get clear-cut overnight for, less so on Baja, but on the Gulf side, and Sinaloa for like shrimp farms, for example. Those are one of the biggest threats to mangroves, but then a lot

of adjacent development that changes the whole hydrology and changes how, you know, the whole functioning, you know, the habitat around those, which have an impact and can degrade those mangroves. When they're degraded, as I'm sure the world's starting to learn

how important mangroves are in terms of pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. They're the most effective ecosystem at doing that more so than tropical rainforests. They pull carbon out, store it, and the sediment around them, which makes them very unique. It's not just in the plant, but you have thousands of years of plant matter that has carbon in it since the industrial revolution, you know, 150 years now, that carbon's in those, in that sediment around those. When those are degraded, deforested, all that carbon goes back out into the atmosphere.

So in addition to the habitat value, these places are really important for birds. They buffer these communities against storm surge, sea turtle habitat, sharks. They're really kind of the fabric of these lagoons, San Ignacio as well, that California gray whales depend on. So they're super important for kind of the whole integrity of these areas. And so we started working with Mexico's National Park Service. The National Commission for Protected areas is what that entity is called to set aside as much. of these mangrove forests as possible for the purpose of conservation. So actually putting under management of this commission to protect these areas.

Through that effort, we've been able to protect about 8,500 acres so far in Magdalena Bay and in the Gulf, and we have another 40,000 acres in the pipeline that were hopefully to get completed within the next year or two. Within that, there's about 19.5 million metric tons of carbon. That's equivalent to one million people's carbon emissions in the United States, annually. Wow. So it's significant and it's a very scalable project to other mangrove areas, not just in Mexico, but in the world. And Mexico, especially the Park Service and these local communities are really grasping that and understanding that and excited to be leaders globally

in what's a natural climate solution. So how do we protect ecosystems to help fight climate change? It's not just about decarbonizing the global economy and using less energy, but we actually have to protect these places that pull this what's called blue carbon. So that's the carbon in our mangroves and our salt marsh, seagrasses, and Baja's rich, and all three of those. And these communities are really on the front line of this work. In San Ignacio Lagoon, last year with support from the United Nations, we got a grant to start restoring degraded mangrove habitat in the southern arm of the lagoon around

El D'Ateel, El Cardone, and working with the communities there to replant mangrove forests and restore those areas. And there are, I mean, the imagery I'm getting, I haven't visited that project yet, but it's, you know, these fishermen, fisher families, ranchers, ecotourism providers that depend on the seasonality of when the whales come. and now they have a financial incentive to help be a part of a natural solution, protect their communities, protect their resources.

We're going to be expanding that work up into Labocana and Puntairejos further north and kind of the northern regions of the lagoon complex, as well as explore opportunities down in La Paz where we have our office down there in Magdalena Bay. Back to your question. And since we have two staff in La Paz,

they spend a lot of time with our partners in Magdalena Bay. We work really closely with some of the communities that are out on the islands there, so these fishing communities. If you want the best seafood meal you've ever had in your entire life, you have to go to Isla Magdalena. It's about a 30-minute ponga ride from Puerto San Carlos, and you sit in an open palapa on the beach, on the bay, watching whales, and it is so delicious and such an incredible experience. The last time I was there was in 2018 and the experience is just seared into my memory of how spectacular that was. You're glistening with memory there.

Hey, you know that we're itching to get our old land cruiser south of the border soon. And when we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance. If your website is fast and easy to use, you can check them out at BajaBound.com and tell them slow Baja sent you. Crazy times, COVID-19, we're sitting six feet apart from each other. what's happening? What's keeping you going there? Yeah. In addition to the mangroves and the land conservation work, we're also working to conserve coral reefs along the entire Mexican Pacific, so from Wohaka all the way up to Kabul Pulmo, Isla Spiritu Santo.

So we're working with the park managers in those areas to improve the management, especially around visitation. We've installed mooring buoys in Espiritu Santo, so the outfitters when they come don't have to drop anchor on the reefs. They can hook up to these mooring buoys. And visitors can have outstanding underwater experience with whale sharks, the reefs, the fish, the birds, the mangroves in those areas. For listeners, if they haven't been to Isla Spiritu Santo, it is such an incredible place just outside of La Paz, the easiest ponga ride to paradise you can take. So we're scaling that up to additional areas, the Rev.iacieto Islands, which are very far-flung rock islands off of the tip of coffee.

San Lucas, very renowned in the dive world, unique place as well. And then we're doing more work actually in the border region. So we've had long-stamp, because we're based in Imperial Beach, which is the southernmost city in the continental United States. Stones throw from the border. Exactly. And our IB office is closer to downtown Tijuana than it is to downtown San Diego. We've had a presence there for a long time.

We've hosted a lot of cleanups over the years and working on policy on both. sides of the border to improve the pollution situation, which I'm sure a lot of people are well aware of. We were just on 60 minutes not that long ago highlighting that issue. And so that's one aspect that we're constantly working on, but we're also trying to reduce plastic waste from crossing the border. It's a binational watershed. Two-thirds of it is on the Mexico side. One-third is on the U.S. side. So the upper watershed drains through from Takate, all the inland Tijuana, through downtown Tijuana where it's a channelized river basin, crosses the border into the Tijuana River estuary on the U.S. side, which is an incredible place, wetland complex, critical on the Pacific

migratory flyway for birds, as well as a number of other. There's about 18,000 acres of protected space there. There's a marine protected area right offshore. The Coronado Islands are offshore of that. That's part of the Pacific Islands Biosphere Reserve of Mexico. So this river ends in just this confluence of these incredible unique protected areas. But it's getting, there's a tsunami of plastic trash that comes out of Tijuana that builds up in the tributary canyons. Then when it rains, washes straight across and, you know, eventually becomes, you know, marine plastics. And so we just recently received funding from the Beniof Ocean Initiative. So this is in partnership with their Clean Currents Coalition. We're one of

nine projects around the world to reduce plastic pollution in the oceans. So we're working with local communities in what's called Los Larellis Canyon. It's one of the tributary canyons. There's tens of thousands of people that live in this area, many off the grid. It's a very poor neighborhood. A lot of recent immigrants. There's a big Haitian population there, as well as a lot of the migrants that come from Central America.

And it's kind of the stop and the holding place before they try to, to cross the border. And, and, you know, unfortunately, there's, you know, there's the trash, the plastic, the pollution, but these people are so friendly and so want to be a part of fixing that solution. And back to, you know, talking about that culture of family and taking the time to speak. And so we've spent more time in that area talking with them and determined that they really want to reduce, not just their consumption of plastics, but help protect the ocean by doing so. So we're installing a trash boom across that tributary canyon

and one of these sediment basins that will capture plastic before it crosses the border and then work with a group, partners, very close friends of ours called Four Walls International, as well as partners in Tijuana, to repurpose that plastic for building materials and parks, recycle what we can, dispose of what we can, but stop it at its source and at the same time work to change that culture.

Yeah. And is somebody manually removing the plastic from when it gets caught? Yep. So you've got you've hired some folks down there have volunteers that are manually removing that. Yeah. So we're still in the permitting phase of that. But we will hopefully get that installed later in the summer. So be ready for the you know, whatever rains there may be this winter, who knows. And work with the community, volunteers. paid staff, paid locals to really be a part of that. And then, you know, they see there's been some pilot projects that Four Walls has done in terms of repurposing plastic in those canyons and into these community playgrounds. And it's really incredible to see that.

And especially in a place like that, that's very kind of, you know, off the grid and neglected, both within Tijuana and nationally as well. And then our offices in our Mexico headquarters, as I mentioned, is in Ensenada. And we haven't had many projects there in Ensenada. But just last year, we started working on protecting and restoring the wetlands of La Mision and Estero Punta Banda. So LaMissiones between Rosarito and Ensenada. It's that incredible wetland, Box Canyon, that empties right into the water there on that great beach just south of La Fonda. And then Astero Punta Banda is between Ensenada and Punta Banda. Both areas are home to Salt Marsh, which is one of those blue carbon ecosystems that stores carbon.

Obviously, lots of birds. Our first step in that project is creating kind of an interpretive trail through both sites so visitors can stop and learn about that area rather than just drive by it. And so that's a really exciting project that we're looking to grow in this next year. Can you tell me a little bit about, I'm super fascinated with sea turtles. If you had referenced the interview I did with David Kier, the author, and I got him, I got started on sea turtles and got, you know, he's an expert on missions. And all of a sudden we're talking about sea turtles because of something about Bahia de Los Angeles. But I know you're working with sea turtles in Wauaca on the beaches in southern Wohaka. What can you tell me about what's going on there?

Yeah. So the beaches of Wahaka and there's also beaches of Mijchokan, these are, you're, you know, some of if not the most important sea turtle nesting beaches on the planet, particularly for Olive Ridley and leatherback turtles. The Olive Ridley Sea Turtle population has rebounded near extinction years ago because of the protection of these beaches. For a long time, we launched these really amazing, fun communications campaigns around sea turtle conservation. So we worked at El Eil del Santo, who is a famous Lucha Libre fighter in Mexico.

I am well aware. We worked with Doris Marr, who was an Argentine playboy model because sea turtle eggs are perceived as a natural aphrodisiac. And so we enlisted as team of spokespeople to do a public campaign about that in the case of Doris Marr was my men don't eat sea turtle eggs, scantily clad image of a beautiful woman. And that slogan, and that resonated deeply in a lot of these communities, as well as El L.I. El Santo, but we realize it's not just about poaching and consumption, that if these habitats are lost, these nesting beaches are lost, then that species is in jeopardy of being gone forever. In the case of one beach in Oaxaca called Morayayuta, which is between Walthuco and Selena

Cruz, there's, I think, over the last nesting season, about 1.3 million sea turtles laid their eggs. So that's about 100 million eggs laid on that beach. It happens in a nesting phenomenon called an adibada where they come in in the middle of the night and the beach is covered in tens of thousands of these sea turtles. Mostly olive ridley. Sometimes the giant leather backs are nesting there as well.

So we realize that is key. If poaching, we're not going to stop poaching. We can work with partners to try to help these communities transition from sea turtle consumers to sea turtle conservationists. And we're working on that with a lot of outreach, educational materials, and the local Zapoteco language there. And we have full-time staff there that our staff member, Luis,

spends night after night on these beaches, working in tandem with the Navy to monitor the beach there. And so we're very much a part of these communities. But then working with the National Park Service in Mexico to actually set aside legal protections for those beaches. So they're not at risk of becoming, a hotel, a marina, which would, you know, forever change that and, and just how incredible that wildlife phenomenon is. It's, you know, as incredible as the whales of San Ignacio Lagoon, if not

more. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's turn towards wrapping it up here, Zach. You've been extraordinarily generous to get together in these times. My pleasure. I really enjoyed talking to you about conservation. How can people get involved? So, If somebody's listening to the podcast, what's the first step? Yeah, first step is check us out at wildcoast.org. There's a lot of resources there, especially on our blog tab. You can dive way deep into a lot of these programs. You can also get connected to our staff in the U.S. and Mexico there.

So on our staff page, you can reach out directly to our members in Mexico here in California. In San Diego County, we're starting to develop more volunteer opportunities in the context of COVID. We've obviously had to take a step back, but we want to get small groups of people back out into the field to work on some of our wetland restoration projects in San Diego County or our Marine protected area works in California. We can sign up for our newsletters. We're a nonprofit, so we depend on donations to function. So, you know, we encourage listeners to please donate even, you know, as little as you can. Five dollars can go a long way, especially from, you know, some of our team down in Mexico.

And you can dedicate your donation directly to one of our projects. And we would happily keep you informed about how that's going. And we got a lot digital fundraisers coming up and a lot of opportunities to engage our audience. And also, you know, people can feel free to email me directly, Zach at wildcoast.org. And I'd be happy to share more about our projects. And of course you're on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. We're on all those places. All those places.

Yeah. Give our social media a follow. share that. That's a great way to outreach about our work and we tend to put a lot of updates there. Can you take us out on a positive message? I mean, you've been at this now, what, 12 plus years? Obviously, you have some successes. There must be plenty of stresses and sleepless nights, but take us out on a positive message about what's happening in Baja specifically that people should know about. Yeah. You know, groups like Wild Coast, we have partners, Pro Natura down in Mexico, Tara Peninsula, You know, fortunately, over the last decade, 15 years, we've been able to lay this great basis and framework for conservation in Baja, California.

That's continuing. There's been a real positive success story. A project that we were involved with was reintroducing condors to the San Pedro Martyr Mountains. That is quite a success story. There's an article just recently about the success of condors in California and Mexico. There was one, I guess, just outside of Yosemite for the first time in decades, more so. And so I think that shows right there if we can, you know, save the California Condor and we being, you know, collective group of partners and all the people that donated to that work and the partners at the zoo. And it takes a, you know, comprehensive, holistic approach to be able to do something like that.

But if that can be a chief, then, you know, we can deal with. a lot of the issues that this planet's facing. In terms of climate change, the mangrove work is moving forward. I mean, those mangroves could have been wiped out, you know, a long time ago, and they're not. They're there, and they're being restored. The communities are involved. For inspiration, I turn to my staff in Mexico, and I turn to those communities that are a part of those natural climate solutions, and they don't let the headlines, you know, that are slowing us down here in the U.S. and California, particularly about, you know, being enthusiastic about a positive next step and making this world more livable.

All right. Well, I really do appreciate you making some time. Wildcoast.org, if you want to see the photos, we want to see the work. And, Zach, thank you again. Thanks, Michael. Hey, you guys know what to do. Please help us by subscribing, sharing, rating, all that stuff. And if you missed anything, you can find the links in the show notes at slowbaha.com.

I'll be back before you know it. And if you want to receive notices on new episodes, Please follow Slow Baja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for you old folks.