In 2011, Rande and I drove a rental car from Todos Santos on
the Pacific side of southern Baja to Punta Colorado on the Sea of Cortez. Passing
through the foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna, we saw a small sign pointing
down a dirt road to the “Santuario de los Cactus.” We stopped for a short visit and returned to the cactus sanctuary this year.
El Santuario de los Cactus is 6 km off the
Transpeninsular Highway between La Paz and San Jose del Cabo at about KM168. The
6-hectare (15-acre) forest-like sanctuary is surrounded by 50 hectares of
protected land in ejido El Rosario, a small village of 25 families in the northern
foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna [ejido is communally-owned farmland]. At an
elevation of 425 m (1400 ft), the sanctuary is part of the dry forest ecoregion,
the transition between the lowland xeric scrub of the southern Baja peninsula and
the pine-oak forests of the mountains (link).
UNESCO designated the Sierra la Laguna a global biosphere reserve in
2003; 23% of the nearly 1,000 species found in the sierra are endemics. Human activities within the
biosphere reserve include extraction of timber and other forest products,
farming and cattle raising (link).
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| Road to the cactus sanctuary with Sierra la Laguna in the background |
