Entwined concepts of community and conservation practice in Bahia de Kino, Mexico

Sept. 6, 2024
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Photo 1: Members of various community groups at the annual November Desfile de la Revolución in Kino

Photo 1: Members of various community groups at the annual November Desfile de la Revolución in Kino

Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with friends at a birthday party, my friend Vicky leans over and says to me, “They joke sometimes that there's something in the water because once people drink it, they always come back to Kino.” Bahia de Kino is a seaside community in northern Sonora, Mexico where I have been off and on over the past two years to do my dissertation research. I have certainly found Vicky’s quip to be true in my experience. 

I am an anthropology doctoral candidate studying the dynamics and histories of community conservation of wetlands. I examine how shifting groups of town residents, bi-national researchers, and visitors care for Kino’s local wetland Laguna la Cruz, while also trying to legally protect Kino’s wetlands and their livelihoods. I am also a West Virginian, a child of botanists and environmental educators, and a lover of mangrove trees and wetland life of all kinds. So, it is equally true to say that my research interest in how transnational community networks, familial relations, and data collection practices shape local conservation projects is about examining my own upbringing in a community very similar to Kino’s conservation community.

Photo 2: Signage encouraging care for Laguna la Cruz posted around the official boundary of the wetland.

Photo 2: Signage encouraging care for Laguna la Cruz posted around the official boundary of the wetland.

I grew up between rivers and freshwater wetlands in West Virginia's eastern panhandle within a community of organizations committed to protecting the state’s wildlands, wetlands, water quality, and species. As a kid, I traipsed across marshes and along streams in the panhandle and near Spruce Knob in the Appalachians, learning how to test water quality around farm runoff points. I participated in workdays to clean and care for local forests alongside community members ranging from federal scientists and conservation planners to schoolteachers and farmers. They all contributed in different ways to collecting and creating knowledge about West Virginia's wildlife and lands and collaboratively planning how to manage and protect them. 

Fresh out of my master’s program, I worked with an international non-governmental organization (NGO), where I learned how multilingualism, national identities, the politics of NGO/business partnership relations, and shifting financial contributions shape data collection, relationships between international collaborators, and ultimately the kinds of “local projects” that get done and who does them. In one such project, I collaborated with Algeria’s UN Environment Programme office to carry out a dune restoration and employment project in Guerbes-Sanhadja Wetland in Algeria’s Skikda Governorate.

Photo 3: Laguna la Cruz coastal wetland

Photo 3: Laguna la Cruz coastal wetland

Parsing these intersecting relationships thus became integral to my doctoral research when I began working in Kino in the summer of 2022. As a working professional I have encountered the idea of “community conservation” or “community projects” in many forms. I have often wondered, who does “community” mean in these cases? What do they do and how? These questions are guiding my fellowship project, and my doctoral work more broadly, to understand how people's personal relationships shape their participation in local wetland conservation projects and how their personal wetland conservation practices emerge.

Photo 4: Public art encouraging releasing sea turtles caught in fishing nets; central Kino.

Photo 4: Public art encouraging releasing sea turtles caught in fishing nets; central Kino.

My larger dissertation project engages with a variety of different groups within Kino’s conservation scene, but my fellowship project focuses on two specific initiatives that Kino community groups are carrying out this year. One is a mangrove reforestation initiative to replant a portion above the shoreline of Laguna la Cruz. This reforestation project would restore wetland forest habitat that serves as a nursery and safe haven for local fish species that are fished by Kino’s fishing families and also make their way out into the Gulf of California. The other is a public art installation campaign to promote vedas (seasonal fishing bans) to allow for more effective regeneration of Kino's fisheries. This is especially important to the Kino community because fisheries form the backbone of Kino’s economy. The question of protecting them sits at the heart of broader conversations about the hardships of fishing livelihoods, the economic and ecological impacts of private shrimp trawling operations off the coast of Kino Bay, and how conservation initiatives like species conservation intersect with local family livelihoods.

By contributing my fellowship funds to these projects, my goal is to tangibly give back to the community that is supporting my dissertation research. By collaboratively documenting the process of carrying out conservation projects, I aim to create a record that future groups can use to plan and carry out their initiatives. I will also act as a participant observer of these projects to see in real time what dynamics come to inform the directions, challenges, and hopes of two local wetland conservation projects in a community that I have 

 


This project is supported by the CLIMAS Environment & Society Fellowship program, the Arizona Institute for Resilience, and the Office for Research, Innovation, and Impact at the University of Arizona. Graduate fellows conduct collaborative and societally-informed research that addresses pressing environmental challenges around the world.

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