A long-running drought in the northern state of Chihuahua has caused three lakes to dry up, leaving tens of thousands of fish to die.
The Bustillos, Encinillas and Fiero lakes have gone from being “robust” bodies of water to “small puddles” surrounded by dying and rotten fish, according to a report published on Wednesday by the EFE news agency.
Laguna de Bustillos is located in the municipality of Cuauhtémoc, Laguna de Encinillas is in the north of the municipality of Chihuahua (which includes the state capital) and Laguna Fierro is in Nuevo Casas Grandes.
Ernesto García Chánez, municipal director of ecology in Nuevos Casas Grandes, told EFE that extreme drought across Chihuahua has caused an “ecological disaster” in the state.
During a visit to Laguna Fierro, he told the news agency that drought has affected Chihuahua for around two years. As water levels in lakes decline, “contaminants concentrate and cause fish to die,” García said.
The estimate that tens of thousands of fish have perished comes from local campesinos, or farmers.
The Milenio newspaper reported in June that most dead fish in Laguna de Bustillos were carp and catfish, some weighing as much as 20 kilograms. Pedro Ortiz Franco, president of a local environmental group, said that rainfall in the area in 2023 was only about one-third of normal levels.
In a striking headline in June, El Heraldo de Chihuahua said that Laguna de Encinillas had gone from an “oasis” to a “desert” in just one year.
“It’s sad to see that this lake is dry as a result of the drought and climate change,” Kamel Athie, a water expert and former National Water Commission (Conagua) official, told the newspaper.
The mass fish die-off at Laguna de Bustillos attracted international news media attention in June, and even the attention of the United States Geological Service, whose Landsat satellites captured images of the lakebed’s devastation.
The entire state of Chihuahua is in drought
In a drought monitor update published on August 5, Conagua reported that 100% of the territory of Chihuahua was affected by some level of drought. The only other state with all of its land affected by drought was Sinaloa.
Just over 54% of land in Chihuahua was affected by “extreme drought,” 27.6% by “severe drought” and 11.1% by “exceptional drought.”
Humberto Salazar, an agriculture official in Nuevos Casas Grandes, told EFE that farmers don’t have enough water or pasture on their properties for their livestock.
“The producers in the region have been taking feed up [to their animals] since March or April, and lately they’ve been taking water up to the fields as well because we don’t have the rain we need,” he said.
Rainfall during the current rainy season has been “very isolated, very limited,” Salazar said. “We hope that the situation improves in coming days.”
With reports from EFE
