3.1 General
The first Spanish town established on the Baja California Peninsula, Loreto was once the capital of
Las Californias (Baja California, which originally included all of the Mexican peninsula, and Alta
California, which was composed of the current American states of California, Nevada, Utah,
Arizona and Wyoming) from 1697 to 1777 and presently serves as one of the five municipalities of
the state of Baja California Sur. Approximately 16,000 people comprise the population of the
region, of which the majority live in the town of Loreto.
3.2 Loreto Bay National Marine Park
The Loreto region also includes a dedicated marine protected area. The Loreto Bay National
Marine Park, depicted in Figure 1, encompasses an area of nearly 2,065 square kilometers, which
encompass most of the ocean included in the study area used in the Alternative Futures Study (Steinitz
et al. 2005). Originally established by a Presidential Decree, the Loreto Bay National Marine Park
was approved by the Mexican Federal Congress on July 19, 1996 and was designated as a UNESCO
World Heritage Site by the United Nations on July 14, 2005. The ecological significance of the
510,253-acre Loreto National Marine Park Bay is derived from its location in the Sea of
Cortez, which is home to 35% of the world’s marine mammal species, 60% of all cetacean species
on Earth, species of(which include whales, dolphins porpoises) and nearly 800 fish species
(The Nature Conservancy 2006).
Biodiversity in the Park is high with over 1,000 species of plants and animals that represent 33% of
the species present in the Sea of Cortez. Of those, 139 are classified as endangered, threatened,
rare, or under special protection, and are therefore protected by law (López et al. 2006). In
addition to the biodiversity and wildlife value of the region, fishing for sustenance and for sport is
widely popular, and contributes to the culture and the economy that sustain the existing population
of Loreto. |
