Help Save the Gray Whales

Laguna San Ignacio, the only undisturbed birthing lagoon, is now being threatened. Mitsubishi, the Japanese conglomerate in partnership with the Mexican Ministry of Trade plans to build the world's largest salt factory right next to Laguna San Ignacio. You can help protect these magnificent creatures.

The Gray Whale mothers have been visiting these lagoon nurseries since time immemorial for two very good reasons: 1) The lagoon waters are so warm that infant whales do not lose precious body heat; and 2) the high salinity buoys up the newborns and allows them to nurse from their mothers more easily. After three months in this tranquil lagoon playground, the young whales are ready to face the arduous passage north to their feeding grounds in Alaska.

Mitsubishi and their Mexican allies' plans call for giant evaporation ponds - 116 square miles of them - to be gouged out of the shoreline. Those ponds will transform lagoon seawater into seven million metric tons of salt each year.

What will this industrialization do to the age-old nursery of the Gray Whale?

  • Giant diesel engines will pump six-thousand gallons of water out of the lagoon EVERY SECOND - reducing the precious salinity that is so vital to newborn whales.

  • A mile-long concrete pier will cut directly across the path of the whales - causing potential injury and death to those whales that attempt to navigate under it.

  • Giant ocean-going ships and oil tankers will dock at the pier - disrupting whale movements, spewing pollution and risking massive oil spill.

You Can Help Prevent this looming ecological catastrophe by joining the campaign to Save the Gray Whales. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has begun mobilizing a continent-wide campaign to stop the salt factory and save the Gray Whale nursery.

 

Campaign to save whale sanctuary from industrialization targets U.N. Committee vote.

The fate of our last pristine gray whale nursery Laguna San Ignacio could hinge on a meeting of the U.N.'s World Heritage Committee in early December.

Located in Baja California, Mexico, this natural treasure was named a World Heritage Site in 1993. Now it is threatened by a massive salt works. Its best chance for protection at the international level lies in getting the Committee to add it to the In Danger list. Yet while a place on the list is more than merited, it isn't likely to be granted without an outpouring of support from concerned citizens around the world, like yourself.

Despite numerous threats posed by this massive project, Mitsubishi is moving full speed ahead to get its Environmental Impact Assessment approved by Mexico. Construction could begin as early as the end of next year!

Mitsubishi's partner in the venture is the Mexican government itself. And with millions of dollars in export income at stake, the Mexican Ministry of Environment will be under enormous political pressure to give Mitsubishi the green light.

That's why it is crucially important that the World Heritage Committee send a clear warning to Mexico by declaring the whale sanctuary In Danger. This strategy has worked before. When the Noranda Corporation sought to build its massive New World Mining Project just outside Yellowstone, our own government refused to step in until NRDC and other environmental groups successfully petitioned the World Heritage Committee to put Yellowstone on the In Danger list.

With your help, we can win the same status for San Ignacio and save the whale sanctuary. Please write the Committee urging In Danger status for Laguna San Ignacio. And if you want to do one thing more; sign the petition to Mitsubishi. Last but not least, join NRDC.

 

Greenwash Award goes to Mitsubishi! (From Corporate Watch - http://www.corpwatch.org/greenwash/mitsubishi.html)

Our quarterly Greenwash Award goes to the Mitsubishi Group of Companies for its ceaseless efforts to portray its various businesses--some of the most destructive on earth--as environmentally friendly.

More specifically, this award goes to the Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsubishi Chemical, and the Mitsubishi subsidiary ESSA - Exportadora de Sal, S.A (a joint venture with the Mexican government) for their ongoing public relations initiative to convince the world that it is environmentally benign, as well as socially and economically desirable to establish the largest industrial salt evaporation facility in the world in a lagoon that is the last pristine calving ground of the California Gray Whale.

In fact, this facility threatens the Gray Whale, along with several other species of sea life. Moreover, the salt mined will be used primarily as feedstock for chlorine production, which in turn is the element reponsible for industrial society's most toxic chemicals.

Each Award recipient will receive a ton of plankton (the Gray Whale’s food source), delivered to their offices.

Help save Laguna San Ignacio, the California Gray Whale's last pristine calving ground, which is located in the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve.

 

Makah Gray Whale Hunt To Be First Step In Commercial Enterprise

 

Visit NRDC's website at http://www.nrdc.org or call the Center at (909) 360-8451.

For more information about the Gray Whales contact Shari Bondy at the Cetacean Education and Research, Box 454 Campbell River, B.C. V9W 5C1 Canada. Or visit their website http://www.greywhale.com. They have an extremely informative booklet called the Gray Whale Handbook for $10.00 (proceeds go to support their research station at Laguna Ojo de Liebre, Baja California).

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