A plaque was installed in the Monte Ceniza Nature Reserve to honor Ernesto Franco.

February 4, 2022

Message by Alan Harper, founding board member

Terra Peninsular lost a great friend last week. Ernesto Franco Vizcaíno was a founding board member of Terra and a friend of many of us.

Ernesto was a professor at CICESE and at California State University at Monterey Bay. Ernesto dedicated his life to the conservation and discovery of Baja California. He introduced me to the blue palm oases of the Sierra San Pedro Mártir and later we walked up Arroyo Matomí, where our first morning we saw mountain lion tracks next to our campsite — tracks that had not been there the night before when we got into our tents.

Ernesto Franco lecturing in 2001
Ernesto Franco lecturing in 2001

Ernesto’s great passions were conservation, fire ecology, and the effects of cattle on the ecosystems of Baja California. He co-authored Land of chamise and pines: historical accounts and current status of northern Baja California’s vegetation, which is perhaps the most important book on the ecology of the region in time of the Dominican padres.

He worked tirelessly (and, unfortunately, fruitlessly) to have a binational Biosphere Reserve designated in the border region. His work on fire ecology in the Sierra San Pedro Mártir with Professor Richard Minnich was prescient. He dedicated himself to allowing the natural fire ecology of these mountains to return, and so that Mexico would not have to repeat the mistakes that Alta California has made in trying to suppress fires, only to have them come back bigger, hotter, and infinitely more destructive.

He spent much of his time in the field looking for the “lost mission” of Baja California ecology: the (perhaps mythical) meadow that has never been visited by cattle, which could show us what the land looked like before the Spanish arrived. He told me that he thought that he had found it, but, like the lost mission, or the fountain of youth, it’s not clear that we will ever know.

Terra celebrates Ernesto’s life and his dedication to our favorite place in the world, and we mourn the loss of his enthusiasm for and knowledge of the region. A longer obituary can be found here.