Southern Tamaulipas is home to some of the state’s most valuable wetlands, essential resources for biodiversity, water regulation, and flood protection. But today these ecosystems are at risk: accelerated loss, pollution, and institutional neglect are advancing unchecked, warn environmentalists.
Despite meeting ecological criteria, the wetlands in the metropolitan area have not been promoted to obtain Ramsar site status, the highest level of international protection, nor do they have a national designation, leaving them in a state of structural vulnerability.
This lack of recognition limits access to conservation, funding, and monitoring mechanisms, allowing the loss of wetland area and pollution to advance steadily and silently, creating a high-risk ecological scenario in Tampico, Madero, and Altamira.
Wetlands are transition zones between land and water, generally shallow. According to the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty focused on their conservation, wetlands are land areas that are temporarily or permanently flooded and maintain a close relationship with the living beings that inhabit them.
Emblematic wetlands such as Laguna del Carpintero, in the heart of urban Tampico; La Vega Escondida, at the Casa de la Naturaleza (House of Nature); and the systems associated with the marshes and coastal strip of Altamira lack national and international designation, which limits their access to resources and conservation mechanisms.
In the case of La Vega Escondida, the efforts were left unfinished, notes environmentalist José Luis León Hurtado, who led a group that sought to meet the requirements to incorporate it first into the National System of Natural Protected Areas—administered by the Federal Government through the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)—and later as a Ramsar site.
It was only designated a “Special Zone Subject to Ecological Conservation” by a 2003 municipal decree in Tampico, which grants it protection only at the local level. Its international designation must be pursued through the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, based in Gland, Switzerland, which promotes the conservation and wise use of these ecosystems.
“They asked us for data on the wetland’s flora and fauna for Conanp (National Commission of Natural Protected Areas) and Ramsar. Biologists from Seduma (Secretariat of Urban Development and the Environment) were involved during the previous administration, and a year ago, when I met with the new Secretary of the Environment, they told me they are still working on it,” says the former director of the Casa de la Naturaleza (House of Nature).
He adds that resuming the process is a priority, but first, the guidelines must be met. “The process was left unfinished and must be reactivated. We urge Seduma to submit the pending studies following the change of government.”
The president of the Pánuco River Estuary Citizens’ Council also emphasizes that the intention is to extend the national and international declaration to the entire lagoon system, of which La Vega Escondida is a part. However, the initial focus is on La Vega Escondida, which encompasses approximately 1,275 hectares of the 42,750 hectares that make up the entire system.
This urban wetland acts as a water regulator in an area vulnerable to flooding, is home to diverse fauna, and constitutes a key space for environmental education in a city affected by real estate pressure and uncontrolled urban growth.
To move forward, the process requires technical studies, delimitation of the protected area, definition of land tenure, and a comprehensive management plan—elements that have not yet been systematically developed. With each change of administration, the issue tends to fade away.
Although Mexico has 144 Ramsar sites, Tamaulipas has only two: Laguna Madre, vital for migratory birds, and Rancho Nuevo turtle beach, essential for the survival of the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle.
Laguna Madre is the world’s largest hypersaline lake and the largest body of water in the country. Located in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Texas border, this coastal system is surrounded by a 223-km sand barrier and is home to 144 species of waterfowl within its 240,000 hectares, encompassing the municipalities of Matamoros, San Fernando, and Soto la Marina.
Rancho Nuevo, in Aldama, in the south-central region, is the world’s most important beach for the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, a species endemic to the Gulf of Mexico, hosting approximately 80 percent of global nesting activity. The area also protects coastal lagoons, dunes, marshes and estuaries, which support a rich biodiversity of mollusks, crustaceans, fish, turtles, birds, marine mammals and mangroves.
Southern Tamaulipas is the most threatened region in the state, according to activist Miguel Ángel Verástegui, who highlights the Garrapatas system in Altamira as the coastal estuarine wetland with the highest level of degradation. Comprising estuaries, floodplains, and mangroves, it connects lagoons with the Chairel-Tamesí system and is estimated to have lost nearly 70 percent of its surface area without any containment measures in place.
“The impact of urban and industrial development has been particularly severe in Altamira, where the construction of the port involved the destruction of vast wetland areas,” emphasizes the director of the Mediating Association for Intelligent Well-being (Ambientam).
He explains that “the loss of mangroves along the coastal strip, which previously acted as a natural barrier, constitutes irreversible environmental destruction. Their saline characteristics were unique and cannot be compared to the freshwater mangroves of other lagoons in the region.”
Remember that in Tampico, “the Laguna del Carpintero has suffered mangrove deforestation on several occasions: between 2007 and 2008, and again in 2013, when there was an attempt to devastate areas. In the second attempt, 6.9 hectares were affected, leading to a legal process that reached the federal court, which determined that it constituted serious environmental damage.”
On the other hand, he points out that pollution is the silent enemy of wetlands. This isn’t about sewage, but rather soapy and gray water, full of detergents, chlorine, and chemicals, which destroy aquatic life from the roots and block mangrove growth.
He asserts that at least 25 illegal dumps of untreated wastewater have been identified in Laguna del Carpintero. “Studies conducted between 2018 and 2019, using official sampling, documented pollutant concentrations between 6,000 and 30,000 times higher than the limits permitted by environmental regulations.”
Verástegui Cavazos maintains that maps, photographic records, and technical evidence support these discharges. He warns that if immediate action is not taken, the scenario for the next five years is critical. And the cost of continuing to ignore it will be even greater, because the rate of wetland disappearance is three times higher than that of forests.
Southern Tamaulipas, surrounded by sea, rivers, and lagoons, holds a strategic natural wealth that today faces slow but irreversible deterioration, notes oceanographer Marcelo René García Hernández.
He says that wetlands fulfill a silent but essential function: they act as natural water filters and as protective barriers that buffer meteorological phenomena, retain sediments, and prevent coastal erosion.
That balance, however, has been lost. The specialist explains that, in the southern zone, several sections of the coastal strip show accelerated erosion, largely linked to the disappearance of mangroves.
To the north, in the Laguna Madre, particularly in the Mezquital area, the loss of vegetation cover is evident, a deterioration that experts associate with the development of the port of Matamoros and the pressure resulting from new infrastructure projects.
Source: milenio
