NRDC director Jacob Scherr says he believes the project is dangerous because it will set a global precedent on locating industrial projects in protected areas. The importance of this case goes well beyond the whale habitat. Yet it is the whales that the environmentalists focus on. The fact that scientists working on the project believe it is sound doesn't carry much weight with NRDC and IFAW . Mark Spalding, an IFAW consultant and professor of international environmental policy and law at the University of California, San Diego, accuses them of being little more than mercenaries.
Science is based on observable, repeatable truth.
One of the ironies of the whole debate is that far fewer whales go to mate in Laguna San Ignacio than to the Ojo de Liebre lagoon, where the current salt works are located. Mr. Le Boeuf says he believes the whales prefer Ojo de Liebre, the salt works notwithstanding, because its entrance is wider and deeper than that at Laguna San Ignacio. The residents of Guerrero Negro, a gritty town of 13,000 where ESSA is by far the biggest employer, don't like being characterized as despoilers of the environment. They are also irritated that the NRDC and IFAW have targeted ESSA without offering realistic development alternatives in an area where overfishing has already reduced economic opportunity. Leonel Cota Montano, the governor of Baja California Sur and a member of a center-left political party that it is normally a staunch backer of ecological causes, takes a similar stance.