12 minute read
Restoring Common Ground
Bonefish & Tarpon Trust is expanding its presence in Mexico through new partnerships with Ducks Unlimited and two of the nation’s most renowned fishing lodges: Playa Blanca and Casa Blanca.
BY T. EDWARD NICKENS
The road runs along the Gulf of Mexico, north of Campeche along the Yucatán Peninsula, where the Riá Celestún Biosphere Reserve cloaks one of the wildest and most remote shorelines in Mexico. Here, migrating blue-winged teal—many fresh from the U.S.—rub feathered shoulders with crested guans, bare-throated tiger herons, and American pygmy kingfishers. And juvenile tarpon and snook haunt the dendritic creeks that wind through forests of red, black, white, and buttonwood mangroves. Until they reach that road. Built some four decades ago outside the tiny town of Isla Arena, the road arrows across the mangrove flats with little discretion. Its asphalt lies atop a tall embankment, which acts as an accidental dam for the estuarine waters of the reserve. Culverts were constructed under the road, but with little accommodation to how they might impact the natural hydrology of the area. The life-giving exchange of fresh water and salt water, critical to mangroves, was stymied. All along the road, dead tangled brush has fallen into natural channels. Creeks and drains are choked with silt. In a region still wild and remote, the one road illustrates the devasting impacts of ill-considered infrastructure.
But in a curious twist, this road along the Yucatán Peninsula has also helped bring together two conservation organizations whose primary missions have found an inspiring confluence. The northern Yucatán is 500 miles from the bonefish flats of the Florida Keys, and farther still from the rice fields of Texas and Arkansas duck hunting country. But the connections between waterfowl and flats fishes are driving new efforts by Bonefish & Tarpon Trust to conserve habitats in Mexico, and spawning new research to detail how this critical region in the Gulf of Mexico is connected to healthy populations of fish and fowl far beyond the Yucatán.
BTT has recently embarked on two new initiatives, encompassing both the western and eastern coasts of the Yucatán Peninsula. In June of 2024, BTT, Ducks Unlimited(DU), and Ducks Unlimited Mexico (DUMAC) signed a three-year memorandum of understanding to partner on mangrove restoration projects along the western Yucatán coast. Following that agreement, BTT sent staff to Mexico to scope out ways the organizations can work together.
On the other side of the peninsula, where some of the most revered flats fisheries in the world attract anglers to remote outposts such as Punta Allen, BTT is taking a different approach. In September of 2024, BTT signed a formal partnership with two of the region’s best-known fly-fishing lodges to bring science to the early efforts to learn more about fisheries in a world-renowned angling destination. Two sister lodges, Casa Blanca and Playa Blanca, sit on a 25-mile-long private island astride Ascension Bay and Espiritu Santo Bay. The lodges work the waters of the 1.3-million-acre Sian Ka’an International Biosphere Reserve, the largest protected area in the Mexican Caribbean. Anglers from around the world arrive to chase permit, tarpon, and bonefish. Giant flocks of frigatebirds crash on bait pushed up by giant schools of jack crevalle, and snook hunt the edges of mangrove islands locals call petenes. The region’s remote location has long stymied development, but explosive growth in and around the gateway community of Tulum, just a couple of hours south of Cancún, has paired with increasing fishing pressure to raise concerns about the flats fisheries. Together, the two projects comprise an expansion of BTT’s presence in the region. The hope is that the power of partnerships will leverage the capabilities of some of the most impactful conservation groups in the Western Hemisphere.
DUCK, DUCK, TARPON
The Yucatán Peninsula juts northward like a thumb into the Gulf of Mexico, its coastline protecting long, serpentine lagoons that lie inside barrier beaches. The lagoons are interspersed with open water and mangroves, stands of cattails, and beds of wigeon grass, shoal grass, and turtle grass. It’s a welcome refuge for wildlife, home to 271 species of birds, plus panther, jaguar, and ocelot.
And a trove of migrating birds. “At least 80 percent of all migratory birds that fly to Mexico and overwinter will use habitats related to mangrove swamps,” points out Eduardo Carrera, CEO for Ducks Unlimited Mexico (DUMAC). One of the most common is the blue-winged teal, a staple of hunting blinds along the Texas Gulf Coast. “We are working to conserve and restore mangrove areas for their historical and natural values, one of which is preferred habitat for many waterfowl and other bird species,” Carrera says. “BTT is trying to preserve mangrove ecosystems in order to guarantee the long-term conservation of tarpon and other fish species. It’s an excellent example of two organizations finding ways to complement their mission work. There is so much common ground.”
When Kellie Ralston, BTT Vice President for Conservation and Public Policy, visited the region in early 2024 through DU’s Mangrove Experience program, she was struck by the opportunities to make nearly immediate and significant improvements in habitat. DUMAC had already been working to restore freshwater flow connections, and the straightforward approaches were making a difference. “Just by reopening a ditch to get water flowing again,” she says, “the habitat goes from no mangroves to mangroves everywhere.” Reconnecting the natural plumbing allowed upstream mangroves to seed the barren flats along the estuary edge, and opened up passage for fish to return to their native spawning grounds. As she watched tarpon pushing up the newly opened channels, she realized that “those were the same habitats where ducks overwinter and get fat and healthy so they can fly north to produce more ducks. We had to figure out a way to get involved.”
The intersection of waterfowl and fisheries conservation is a fertile connection for BTT and DU, even far from the Yucatán. Juvenile tarpon in Florida move through a mix of natural creeks, drainage and irrigation ditches, and navigation canals to travel miles inland, far from the coast. In the South Carolina Lowcountry and along the southeastern North Carolina coast, young tarpon are known to access historic rice impoundments that now are managed specifically for waterfowl. These Mexico initiatives build on areas of common ground. “By restoring the hydrology to provide more and better habitat for ducks, we do the same for juvenile tarpon and snook across the region,” says Dr. Aaron Adams, Director of Science and Conservation for BTT. “This is a perfect collaboration in that to the experience and knowledge base of DU with its more terrestrial approach, we add our deep understanding of tarpon and snook biology and the cultural and recreational values they bring to the landscape.”
DU’s and DUMAC’s overall approach to conservation also seemed like a natural fit. In the 1930s, DU began its stakeholderbased approach to conservation: If you have good habitat, you’ll have good populations of target species. While BTT takes a similar stakeholder approach to fisheries, most fisheries management initiatives are only beginning to consider other values that impact fisheries. “Most fisheries management is based on stock assessments,” Adams says, “but don’t integrate habitat and water quality issues into the management of their vision.”
And the benefits go beyond the habitats. According to a 2020 census, the village of Isla Arena had 978 residents, nearly half of which were women. With many of the region’s men involved in commercial fishing activities, Isla Arena’s women provided much of the labor for DUMAC’s groundbreaking efforts to clear debris and open up waterways along the raised road bed. Not only did the work provide needed employment—61 percent of women in the project reported that the work accounted for nearly one-half of their family sustenance, with 13 percent saying it was the sole means of income—but the hands-on efforts underscored the value of stewardship in the region. “The community buy-in on the restoration work was significant,” says Ralston. “Given all the connections—the habitat, the fisheries, the impact of conservation work on the local economy—this collaboration was a no-brainer for us.”
A bonus is that there will be local positive impacts as well, since the project area is toward the northern end of the mangrove wetland system that supports the recreational fishery for juvenile tarpon based out of Campeche.
And it’s not the only example of a joint project that can change an entire region’s relationship to the on which it depends.
THE ANGLING EFFECT
On the other side of the Yucatán Peninsula, in a region better known to flats anglers, BTT’s recently inked agreements with the Casa Blanca and Playa Blanca lodges is a perfect example of how BTT is exporting its approach to science-based conservation. Whereas many of the issues facing flats fisheries along the more human-impacted landscapes of the Yucatán are as obvious as a soaring road across the mangroves, challenges to fisheries conservation in more remote areas such as the Sian Ka’an are more subtle and insidious.
The mere footprint of such a large protected area can lend a false sense of security for conservation interests, says Jim McDuffie, BTT President and CEO, but inside such little-traveled reserves it is difficult to know the impact of illegal fishing and what role, if any, mortality associated with catch-and-release fishing might play in local gamefish populations. But the biggest threat comes if bonefish, tarpon, or permit within the Sian Ka’an Reserve migrate out of the reserve, to spawn for example. Once out of the reserve, the fish are unprotected from harvest. And as BTT research has shown, the most remote flats in the hemisphere are connected to distant waters by fish whose migration patterns are only recently coming to light. Earlier BTT research on bonefish genetics and the mechanics of ocean currents showed that some bonefish larvae spawned in the Yucatán can drift to the Florida Keys under certain conditions, findings that helped fuel BTT’s interest in the region.
At Casa Blanca and Playa Blanca, the partnership with BTT is evident from the ground up, says general manager Juan Carlos Rodriguez Bush. The fishery itself is “incredible,” he says. “You can see schools of 400 permit, and massive tarpon. But it is very important to communicate to the world that this is not only a business, but is a way to invest in conservation.” Profits from the lodges are poured into conservation initiatives. Lodge staff are remodeling a building for use as a research laboratory, offices, and sleeping quarters for visiting scientists. Plans are underway this year to convert the entire island from fossil fuels to solar-powered energy, Bush says. And the growing relationship with BTT will allow the lodges to tap into its proven models that pair recreational fishing and guiding with science.
A looming challenge for fisheries in the region is a stark lack of understanding about basic fish ecology. Habitat use, fish movements, where tarpon and permit and bonefish spawn, where migration routes are located—there is “very little data on any of this,” says Adams. “Our big-picture goal is to work with the lodges to build that foundation.” Inside the bay, fish populations are protected by the covenants of the reserve. But enforcement is nil. And fish that leave the protected zones—bonefish in pre-spawning aggregations, tarpon on annual migrations—are a total wild card. The good news is that such a dearth of information means that useful work can commence immediately. Under the agreement, BTT will work with lodge operators, guides, and anglers on better fish handling practices to minimize the impacts of recreational fishing. Plans are underway to train guides on fish tagging procedures, to widen the footprint of the growing database of flats fish movements across the hemisphere. “We are in just the first steps in what we hope is a considerably larger collaboration,” Adams said. “We’re laying out the framework. The next steps are to put boots on the ground.”
That’s a prospect that makes these new collaborations so exciting. Where there are few knowns, this is great opportunity for progress. And what is most important is already known, says McDuffie. Flats fisheries in Mexico, in Florida, along the Gulf Coast, and north into the Mid-Atlantic states “don’t exist like they are an aquarium in some marine park,” he says. “They are all connected, and we are learning that they are connected in more intricate ways than ever imagined. We have to look over the horizon and be mindful that what happens in places like the Yucatán in Mexico matter on a much larger scale than Mexico.”
And be mindful that successful conservation on such a scale will take as many like-minded partners as BTT can find.
An award-winning author and journalist, T. Edward Nickens is editor-at-large of Field & Stream and a contributing editor for Garden & Gun and Audubon magazine.
