Doug Hammer

Doug Hammer is an NRDC member.

En route, we flew over Laguna Guerrero Negro, the world's largest commercial salt producer. Utterly flat, with starkly white plains of salt and hectares of iridescent blue-green ponds, seeming lifeless, it was not of this Earth. So what relief, and joy, we found at Laguna San Ignacio, protected at last from human desecration.

In our few days encamped there, visiting the inhabitants, who seemed to welcome us (notwithstanding that we were uninvited guests), we had the privilege of learning a bit about reality that I doubt we could experience anywhere else. On the water, we were greeted by gray whales, whose winter home and birthing place is Laguna San Ignacio.

Those animals, unlike so many of our species, seemed to want only to learn a little about us, not to inquire what use we (or our body parts) might be to them. Magnificent as the whales are, Laguna San Ignacio is also home to myriad other amazing species, from infinitely graceful families of pelicans to tiny octopuses making their way in tidal flats to impenetrable forests of mangroves.

In the 1990s, Mitsubishi Corporation and the Mexican government decided Laguna San Ignacio should die to put salt on the tables of humans, should become another Laguna Guerrero Negro. There was money to be made and no environmental laws in Mexico to stop them.

But the would-be desecrators neglected to reckon with Jacob Scherr and Joel Reynolds of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the tens of thousands of other patriots of the Earth that they recruited to the cause of preserving Laguna San Ignacio for its true owners. For their years of dedication and awesome resourcefulness, we thank the saviors of Laguna San Ignacio.

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