Everything began with a plan by U.S. fossil fuel companies in Texas to export natural gas to the vast markets of China.

But instead of building expensive infrastructure through the U.S., developers looked south, proposing an almost 500-mile/800-kilometer pipeline starting in Guadalupe, Chihuahua, cutting across the deserts of Chihuahua and Sonora, and ending at the northern edge of the Sea of Cortéz.

There, the plan includes building a massive liquefaction plant and an industrial port to handle 300-meter-long/almost 1,000 feet long methane tankers—carrying up to 15 million tons of liquefied natural gas every year to China, South Korea, Japan, and the broader Asian market.

Now, there are a lot of issues with all of this but today we’re going to be focusing on one that’s relevant to our work: the protection of irreplaceable biodiversity.

The gas-carrying tankers that would be traveling up and down the Sea of Cortez are blazing through one of the most fragile and biologically rich marine environments on the planet.

This sea, stretching 1,000 miles, is home to 39% of the world’s marine mammal species. It’s where whales mate, calve, and raise their young in the warm, calm waters. Dolphins, porpoises, and hundreds of fish species depend on this sanctuary—about 90% of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

So this brings us to today’s guest, Beatriz Padilla, wilderness advocate and painter. She has embarked on an extremely brave hunger strike to oppose the relentless passage of tankers through one of the planet’s most vital marine ecosystems. Beatriz is a longtime friend of ours at WILD.org, and we’re proud to stand with her in protecting wild lands. In this episode, we dive into her mission—and how she’s using her art and her body to defend the wild.

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