While the current worries of government officials and lakeshore inhabitants are closely focused on Lake Chapala’s dismal water level, scientists and conservation experts are more deeply concerned about serious environmental problems that are not getting much attention in political and public spheres.
Degradation of the lake’s ecosystem is bringing about the precipitous decline of the lake’s native fish population, according to an article published last week in the Guadalajara daily Milenio. The text by Agustin del Castillo, a distinguished journalist on environmental issues, reveals the results of scientific research indicating that nearly a third of Chapala’s 28 endemic species have become endangered or out-right extinct over the past 50 years.
Rodrigo Moncayo Estrada and Carlos Escalera Gallardo, authors of the study, warn that all of the lake’s unique aquatic fauna could be wiped out by 2020 unless the negative trend is reversed through prompt and effective management.
Alejandro Juarez, director of the environmental development institute Corazon de la Tierra, points to the introduction of non-native species, deforestation, siltation, contamination and fluctuating water levels among multiple factors that have altered the ecosystem, killing off fish breeds and the plankton they feed on to survive. He views pollution caused by untreated wastewater and the runoff of chemical fertilizers and pesticides utilized in agricultural fields bordering the lake as a particularly acute problem.
Juarez is an advocate for continued research and stringent monitoring of pollution levels in the lake. He laments that the Mexican government has been lax in developing the kind of integral strategies for natural resource management that are endorsed by lake experts from around the world.
A telling sign such official blindness is the fate of a conservation and management program drawn up to complement Lake Chapala’s 2009 designation as a Ramsar wetlands site. Intended to go into effect in 2011, the plan has apparently been shelved, gathering dust somewhere in the federal bureaucracy.