A once-dying Mexican river delta is being slowly nursed back to life

IN A DROUGHT-stricken Mexican border region at the centre of growing competition with the US for water, conservationists are working to bring a once-dying river delta back to life.

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On a stretch of the Colorado River, which on the Mexican side of the frontier is mostly a dry riverbed, native cottonwood and willow have been re-planted in place of invasive shrubs.

It's the fruit of two decades of work by conservationists along the river — part of the river from the US-Mexican border to the upper estuary of the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez.

“If we give a little water and care to recover the action of the river, we can recover environment and benefit vastly,” said Enrique Vilellegas, director of the Colorado River Delta programme at the Sonoran Institute, a US-Mexican civil society group.