The bear, spotted while Robles was in middle school, prompted the family to let a portion of their land go wild after rearing cattle for four generations.
Eventually they spotted ocelots and golden eagles, six different species of rattlesnake and a jaguar. Scientists flooded in and by 2011 the ranch was federally designated a Natural Protected Area.
Now Robles fears the sanctuary he built with his father is in danger, as government contractors begin felling trees and bulldozing the path for the railroad toward his family's
“Things will change completely in a matter of weeks, you know,” Robles said, adding that the project will fragment habitat his family worked hard to nurture. “It will create a kind of manmade wall that will not allow for animal species to migrate from one side to the other.”
The railroad project is billed as bolstering connections between a Pacific port and the border with
In February, military officials travelled to
Nor is it clear why the new route is necessary other than to bring the line closer to new mines owned by the rail operator's parent company,
Meanwhile, construction began a few months ago on communal land north of
The project has drawn comparisons to the much larger
No official map of the new rail line has been published. But according to a map leaked by a local official in the spring, the project will create a second rail line for a portion of the existing route between
Locals say the route rides roughshod over their farms' irrigation canals and threatens the reservoir that provides water for the township's 12,500 residents.
In addition to disrupting wildlife that rely on the river, construction will also cut up an important migration corridor over the Azul and
The map's details are contested, including by Durazo, who has said it won't pass directly through
About 80 homes and ranches lie on or next to the route, according to Wildlands Network's analysis of the leaked map. The state’s infrastructure and urban development department has offered to buy portions of some properties for as little as
“It is a mockery," said
Asked why the offer was so low, the state infrastructure department’s chief of transparency,
“One of the main problems was precisely that: the uncertainty that exists among the people because of the lack of communication,” García said.
Locals can only guess at the new railroad’s purpose, however, in the face of an almost complete vacuum of information. The new route will bring tracks within roughly 10 miles of
“There’s no real information. There’s no official project,” said Manteca. “There’s nothing.”
Over the summer, government agencies deflected information requests into a torturous loop. First the town of
“They’ve kind of been ping ponging responsibilities back and forth, but we haven’t been able to get any real information,” said Manteca. “It's so strange. It's like fighting a ghost.”
Manteca's struggle is mirrored in
Then, in a move that sparked international outrage, his government produced piecemeal environmental impact statements months after construction had already begun.
In Sonora, Durazo, who served as
“The route passes meters from the dam" that is 50 years old, Siquieros said. “It has never been maintained to be capable of surviving the vibrations and everything the project entails.”
By weight, over half of the port of Guaymas’ traffic — arriving or departing either on
It might be difficult to imagine an accident causing as much environmental damage in the Sonoran desert as the
“Yes, maybe less population, because it's arid, but so many species," he said.
Ecologists say that severing migratory corridors is particularly dangerous for species on the edge of their range, like black bears, who risk being cut off from larger populations as their habitat is increasingly fragmented.
It's too late to stop the project now, Robles said, but there's time to save as much as possible of his father's vision sparked by that first picture of a black bear.
“This is one of the only towns in
“The biodiversity, the importance of it, we will try to protect," he said.
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