| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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feature Ironwood As you drive into Kino Bay, Mexico, miles of patchy brown desert plains give way to a forest of saguaro cacti, and then, without warning, to the sweeping blue expanse of the Sea of Cortez. Lizards and quails scurry across your path while pelicans fly in jet-like formations over the water. A handful of vendors peddle straw hats and beverages along the beach road, and wooden signs advertise the availability of ironwood carvings--plant and animal figurines carved from the wood of the desert ironwood tree. Ironwood carvings have long been a favorite souvenir for vacationers to the Kino Bay region. More recently, their popularity has spread, and carvings can now be purchased throughout most of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. But ironwood trees are in decline. Charcoal production, rangeland clearance, fuelwood gathering, and the crafts industry have all reduced ironwood throughout its Sonoran Desert range. So critical is ironwood to the Sonoran ecosystem that its decline threatens a host of associated plants and animals. While ironwood carvings overflow on the shelves of tourist shops, the plants and animals they represent may be suffering from the loss of the tree itself in its native habitat.
Faced with dwindling supplies of their essential resource, local artisans who carve ironwood have begun to take an active role in its conservation. These carvers come from two societies--the Mexican fishing village of Old Kino, and two nearby Seri Indian settlements. As I worked with these communities, I became aware of both the great potential and constant complexity that come into play when local culture, politics, and economies are part of the conservation equation. My introduction to ironwood (Olneya tesota) came in the summer of 1992 when I began an internship with Gary Paul Nabhan, a desert ecologist and ethnobotanist who works in Arizona and Mexico. Gary explained that a bi-national team, the Ironwood Alliance, had recently joined efforts to address the depletion of ironwood trees on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. While most of the alliance consisted of Mexican and American scientists and policy makers, artisans were invited to join. And, because the Seri in particular tend to avoid political organizing, our field team that summer would serve as liaison between the alliance and local artisans concerned about ironwood depletion. We also planned to join field researchers studying ironwood ecology. "That's ironwood over there," Gary said as we drove down the highway from Tucson, Arizona, to Kino Bay. "It looks like mesquite, but the leaves are more gray-green. At least that's what people tell me. I wouldn't know. I'm color blind." Having just flown in from Connecticut the previous day, I was dazzled by this first encounter with the desert. But it wasn't ironwood that caught my attention. I was ogling the ocotillo with its spindly arms reaching skyward. I was awed by the towering saguaros and fuzzy yellow cholla scattered across the plains. "That's it?" I asked as I regarded the most ordinary plant of the bunch. Despite my initial disappointment, I came to understand what makes ironwood an honored desert denizen. Ironwood's range extends from southern Arizona to Baja, California, and southern Sonora. The hardy, slow-growing legume can live for at least eight hundred years and is adept at enduring desert extremes. Its roots tap deep into limited water supplies and secure crucial nutrients such as nitrogen out of the soil. Its broad, low canopy provides essential shade from the desert sun, with temperatures as much as 60 degrees F cooler at its trunk than on open ground. Field researchers soon learn to seek refuge beneath the shade of ironwood's canopy to avoid the daily 100-plus degree temperatures. And they aren't alone. The combined shade, water availability, and nutrient richness of ironwood microsites make them oases that hundreds of species depend on for survival. As desert ecologist Humberto Suzan explained to us, "Ironwood is called a `Tnurse plant' because so many desert plants begin their lives under the protection of its canopy." Leading the list of these desert plants are all the charismatic succulents I first noticed in Arizona--ocotillos, saguaros, cholla--as well as at least 120 more species. Ironwood, along with other Sonoran plants that serve as nurse trees, shelters several endangered species as well, including the boojum tree (Fouquieria columnaris), Tumamoc globeberry (Tumamoca macdougalii), and night-blooming cereus (Peniocereus striatus). Wandering through the desert around Kino Bay, I was often amazed by the clumping of plant life around ironwood trees. The appearance is something like that of hot sunbathers clustered under scattered beach umbrellas. Members of our research team from Prescott College in Arizona measured a 36-percent increase in plant species diversity and a 46- percent increase in species abundance around ironwood trees over randomly selected sites. One morning they came across a single tree on a site north of Kino Bay that shepherded 14 chest-high columnar cacti. In time, these succulents will outgrow the humble ironwood under which they began their growth, and they may even outcompete it in the race for survival. Without the ironwood, they may never complete their first year. Animals, too, take advantage of ironwood's hospitable conditions. The tree's foliage, flowers, fruit, and bark provide forage for invertebrates and vertebrates alike. Branches form roosting sites for birds; crevices create cover for iguanas and other reptiles. Several endangered animal species depend on ironwood habitat, including the desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), Sonoran pronghorn (Antilocapra americana sonoriensis), and masked bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus ridgwayi). In short, while ironwood is not yet an endangered species, it is critical to the lives of endangered plants and animals. As we came to know the Seri and Mexican artisans around Kino Bay, we understood the critical role ironwood also plays in Sonora's human communities. One hot afternoon, we ventured out to the Seri village of Punta Chueca. After traveling for nearly an hour along a bumpy dirt road, we finally spied the cluster of government houses that comprise this isolated community. About half of the remaining six hundred Seri people now live in Punta Chueca, the rest in the village of El Desemboque further north. Together they represent one of the last hunter-gatherer groups still living a subsistence lifestyle in North America. Once a nomadic group, they settled in housing in the middle of this century, and now make their living fishing, harvesting jojoba, and selling crafts. It doesn't take long for a newcomer to Punta Chueca to realize the importance of this last industry. As our red Toyota mini-van rounded the last bend into town, we could already see dozens of Seri--mostly women--emerging from their houses. They had obviously seen us coming for a while. Each carried strands and strands of shell necklaces, and some clutched small parcels covered in cloth. The women uncovered the parcels to reveal examples of Seri ironwood carving: a snake, a dolphin, a turtle. Each had been carved by hand using only simple tools, then polished to a smooth finish. Seri carvings are known for their abstraction. They tend to capture the movement or essence of an animal rather than details of its features. And yet the figurines demonstrate a naturalism, an authenticity of spirit, that many have tied to the Seri's direct observation of the animals in their native habitats. "Ah, cuidado! Careful!" Gary exclaimed as one of the Seri women showed him an ironwood snake that indeed looked ready to slither out of her grasp. We purchased several carvings before we left. A typical sculpture measures between six and twelve inches, takes nearly a week to make, and sells for as little as $20. These prices have dropped substantially over the last several years, and so have the number of artists. Once numbering near 150, there are now only about 15 full-time Seri carvers remaining. Isolated uses of ironwood by the Seri stem back hundreds of years. The dense wood was traditionally carved for harpoon shafts, boat oars, and other utilitarian purposes, but ironwood figurines of wildlife are a relatively recent innovation. By the 1960s, the local fishery, the Seri's main source of income, had nearly collapsed, largely from competition with Mexican fishermen. Around that time, Seri artisan Jose Astorga began carving three-dimensional figures from ironwood, and when tourists began purchasing them, dozens of Seri families followed his lead. In a short time, ironwood carvings were bringing substantial economic gains to the community. American anthropology students and art traders working among the Seri not only helped the carvers sell their wares abroad, but suggested ways to improve the appeal of the figurines. For example, the Seri had originally used beads to make eyes on their animals, but buyers preferred the pure wood. Shoe polish and waxes helped give the pieces a finished surface. While some might balk at this influence of outsiders, ironwood figurines are not traditional sacred pieces that were adulterated by commercial markets; rather they have always been produced to fill a consumer demand. Those who know the Seri well also insist that they are a savvy, even opportunistic group, not victims of outside marketers. These traits have enabled them to survive as an independent community and will probably sustain them through the current ironwood crisis. In contrast to the quiet of the Seri village, the buzz of power tools seemed to emanate from every yard around the Mexican workshops in Old Kino. Stacks of wood rose up behind many of the houses. Under the shade of a long, open shed, two men and a woman were in various stages of working duck figurines. An older carver, who later explained that he was the father of the three in the back, motioned for me to come into another building around the corner. Rows of ironwood dolphins, roadrunners, and quail lay across the shelves. Here and in other shops in Old Kino, there was a broader array of subjects than the native plants and animals carved by the Seri. Horses, bulls, flamingos, unicorns, mermaids, baseballs, even Tecate beer bottles. Beside the wood figurines lay the models for these pieces: plastic and ceramic animal figures of the sort one would find in a dime store. Mexican carvers strive for greater realism in their pieces than do the Seri. Instead of a smooth surface, many pieces feature carved feathers, fur, or other details. Mexican carving started about five years after Jose Astorga began his trade. The first Mexican carver, Aurelio Palma, learned from the Seri, then taught friends and family in Old Kino. Having adapted the basic techniques to electrically powered carving and sanding tools, a Mexican artisan can complete a carving in hours and can produce 50 times more carvings than can a Seri artisan. As a result, they are able to sell carvings cheaply and in large quantities to storeowners in Mexico and the United States. Carving is often a family business, with two to three thousand non-Seri now involved in the trade. The relationship between Seri and Mexican carvers is a complex one that changes from one individual to the next. As outsiders, our field team struggled to understand the social and cultural dynamics of the two communities. We heard conflicting reports about the Seri's view of Mexican competition. For example, some of the Seri expressed anger about how the Mexicans were outcompeting their carvers, whose villages lack electricity and who cannot afford power tools; other people reported that the Seri purchased rough- hewn carvings from the Mexican artisans and finished them by hand. Despite these complications, one common concern superseded all differences: the depletion of ironwood. Ironwood is being rapidly consumed across an area twice the size of Massachusetts. Bulldozers plow through Sonoran ironwood stands, creating more rangeland for cattle and providing additional space for ejidos--rural cooperatives organized by the Mexican government to encourage agricultural development and rural settlement. Cutting for fuelwood, brick-making ovens, and the crafts industry also contribute to the decline of ironwood. But it is illegal harvesting for charcoal production that constitutes the last, and greatest, drain. When consumers in the United States eat mesquite-grilled steak, fish, or chicken, they are probably unaware of the environmental abuses to which their meal is tied. First, mesquite charcoal production creates such extreme air pollution that the industry does not pass U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for air quality. So, all production occurs south of the border, while more than 95 percent of the charcoal is exported north. Furthermore, most mesquite charcoal has been mixed with substantial quantities of ironwood. The reason is simple. Ironwood trees often grow in close proximity to mesquite, making it easy to harvest both together. As Gary Nabhan has pointed out, "Ironwood has been a by-catch of mesquite harvests in much the way dolphins are a by-catch of tuna harvests." In the case of ironwood, however, there are distinct advantages of sneaking the by-catch into the intended product. Given its density, ironwood burns extremely well, making it ideal for charcoal use from the standpoint of energy output. Only a small amount of mesquite needs to be included in the mix to produce the desired aroma. What makes ironwood ecologically unsuitable for charcoal production is its slow growth. It takes so long for a mature tree to be replaced that one ecologist has suggested that we should think of ironwood as a mineral. Mesquite, by contrast, regenerates rapidly and even flourishes under rangeland conditions; a mesquite plant under irrigation can reach a height of 15 feet in three years. In random samples over the course of the summer, we discovered that bags of "mesquite charcoal" contained as much as 40 percent ironwood. It is not difficult to distinguish between the two types of charcoal, but customs officials are not trained to do so, and do not check bags at the border. Solutions to the charcoal production problem have not been easy to implement, but they do exist. Long-standing Mexican law prohibits most cutting of live ironwood, but harvesters are known to girdle trees clandestinely and return for them when they were dead. In 1992, the Governor of Sonora banned all use of ironwood except for collecting dead wood for crafts. Unfortunately, ironwood cutters are not a group easy to locate, much less regulate. Officials recently discovered a truck full of ironwood harvested by Sonorans in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona. Most of the harvesters, who included several young boys, escaped. A better course of action may be to encourage consumers on this side of the border to demand more environmentally sound alternatives to mesquite charcoal. As it turns out, one can produce the mesquite aroma and flavor by burning only the pods of the trees on any kind of fire. Efforts are currently underway to make these pods widely available to steakhouses and individual consumers throughout the United States, and Ironwood Alliance members have alerted mesquite charcoal producers in the Bay Area about this environmentally friendly product. According to Ken Millhiser, president of San Francisco's Lazzari Fuel Company, a major mesquite charcoal distributor, mesquite pods do not provide a comparable flavor to the wood. But faced with Mexican laws that revoke production licenses for companies caught harvesting ironwood, Lazzari is being more careful about where their mesquite comes from. For instance, Lazzari now avoids making charcoal from wood collected in coastal Seri country where ironwood occurs. "I don't think we have a speck of it in our product," says Millhiser about ironwood, and his company has also started pruning mesquite trees rather than clearcutting them. A quick comparison with the charcoal industry reveals some of the basic merits of crafts production. While the legally permitted charcoal producers have reduced their consumption to three thousand tons of live ironwood each year and often harvest whole trees, the carving industry uses trees already dead. Not only does carving employ far more individuals, but it generates at least one hundred times the profits as does the same weight of wood used for charcoal. In many ways, carvers have always been good conservationists. They prefer to remove single branches from the ironwood rather than cutting down the entire tree. New limbs will resprout, and other dead branches can be cut one at a time while regeneration occurs. With ironwood in such short supply, though, even these methods are not enough to ensure long-term reserves. Carvers are acutely aware of the depletion of their favorite carving material. Once available within walking distance from their homes, large supplies of ironwood now can only be obtained by driving to less populated regions. As distances increase, travel costs alone begin to make the industry unsustainable. According to Seri artist Nacho Barnett, "There are probably only three years of good carving left." As the Ironwood Alliance worked with the carvers, its assistance posed a quandary. How could we offer help without intruding on the local process? How could we work among both Mexicans and Seris without favoring one over the other? Did our involvement threaten to make a sham of authentic arts and traditions? We have been fortunate to have on the team Jim Hills, director of the Arizona store Native and Nature, and long- time friend and trader with the Seri. Jim had lived among the Seri as an anthropology student and knew the community well. He provided carving tools and ideas for new markets, and was enthusiastic about working again among his old friends. The Seri have already responded to ironwood depletion by developing other crafts, including bead and shell necklaces, grass baskets, and clay figurines--using materials available in nearly limitless supply around the region. More recently, they have also been refining the carving technique for an alternative material to ironwood--barite, a local stone. Ranging in color from sea-foam blue to mottled red, barite carves much like the soapstone used by Inuits in Alaska. Diversifying their carving media gives the Seri economic protection should any one material be depleted. In fact, the Seri have experimented with various materials from the beginning, carving barite, pipestone, osage orange, and cherry wood before settling on ironwood. But never before has the need for alternatives been so pressing (see sidebar). At a conference in Old Kino last December, the Seri took further measures to make ironwood carving more viable. Because of the appeal of indigenous art, storeowners will often label Mexican carvings as "Seri-made." The Seri cannot sell their authentic works for as low a price, and hence their own sales suffer. To combat this problem, the Seri are now working to obtain special government certification that identifies them as originators of ironwood carving and registers their pieces accordingly. At the conference, 80 Seri signed a petition to the Mexican government. The statement stressed that the mass production of machine-made "imitation" Seri carvings had caused many Seri to abandon their craft, and it called on the government to enforce laws against cutting and collecting ironwood, while granting the Seri rights to use the wood and other materials. In response, the Mexican federal government plans to list ironwood as a "protected keystone species" and may prohibit all collecting of live wood, except by the Seri. Authentic Seri carvings will also be trademarked. Such changes would no doubt affect the Mexican carvers, who have supported both a crackdown on illegal harvesting of ironwood and procedures for certifying woodcutters who practice sound harvesting techniques. Ultimately, the future of ironwood rests in the hands of the people who share its desert home. On each visit to Kino Bay, my colleagues and I did our best to be sensitive to local dynamics and needs, and to provide useful assistance where it was requested. Sometimes we stumbled, sometimes we seemed to succeed. But as I write this, all of us are back in the States, busy on other projects; we are hardly essential to the lives of Kino Bay or Punta Chueca residents. Meanwhile, another coastal Sonoran morning begins. Lizards scurry, pelicans soar, sanding tools hum, Seri artisans carve, sculpt, and weave. For the ironwood trees growing nearby, this is the community that counts.
Sara St. Antoine graduated from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 1993. She is currently developing environmental education programs as an Echoing Green Public Service Fellow. |
Summer 1994
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