Red Delta: Fighting for Life at the End of the Colorado River

By Charles Bergman

Paperback, 7 x 9, 288 pages,

The region was sparsely populated by farmers and indigenous people. Its wildlife was little known. And it was in Mexico, invisible to North Americans. Thus, after the Water Treaty of 1944 was signed by the United States and Mexico, the flow of the Colorado River diminished to a trickle in the Mexican delta, transforming the fertile land of green lagoons into a dry wasteland. And nobody seemed to care.

People have begun to care about the Mexican delta of the Colorado River, creating one of the most remarkable environmental stories on the continent. Working with Defenders of Wildlife, an organization dedicated to preserving the delta’s fragile recovery, writer Charles Bergman helps readers witness today’s delta in words and pictures. Whether in search of a rare and endangered bird sifting through the sands of the delta’s badlands for fossils, or visiting a village of the delta’s impoverished Cucupá people, Bergman helps us see the variety and abundance of life in this once-forgotten place.

Red Delta is decidedly not an elegy for a lost environment. In the words of western water rights expert and author Charles Wilkinson, “In this loving, fair-minded, and ultimately uplifting account, Charles Bergman trains our gaze away from the excesses of the past toward the future.” Combining the powerful account of the delta’s restored natural diversity with clear information on the “river of law” that governs water allotments to it. Charles Bergman tells a story of hope and recovery.

Charles Bergman is the author of two previously acclaimed books— Wild Echoes: Encounters with the Most Endangered Animals in North American and Orion’s Legacy: A Cultural History of Man as Hunter. He has written and photographed extensively on nature, and his work has appeared in such journals and magazines as Smithsonian, Audubon, National Geographic, and Defenders. While on a Fulbright Fellowship in Mexico, Mr. Bergman researched the U.S.–Mexico Water Treaty negotiations and other documents relevant to the story of the Mexican Delta of the Colorado River, using untranslated Spanish-language publications from Archivo Historico del Agua in Mexico, D.F. Mr. Bergman is a professor of English at Pacific Lutheran University and lives in Steilacoom, Washington.

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