Harvesting an agave for mescal production which includes tequila is not a major threat in northeastern Mexico, as it is in the western portion of the nation.
As a WIRED report specified though, as drought has strengthened to turn more often, the cattle which have customarily gazed on grasses, as well as other native forage, have been forced to feed on agaves.
The land is currently heavily grazed and degraded that such agaves are vanishing or are eaten by the cattle even before they can flower, endangering other essential denizens of the desert scrub, specifically the Mexican long-nosed bat.
Climate change, as well as overgrazing, are destroying plants on which Mexican long-nosed bat relies on. Now, an initiative is attempting to restore the balance.
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A Jimador (person who works on the agave plant) holds an agave pineapple on a field in Tequila, Jalisco state, Mexico
'Agave Asperrima'
At a large valley's southeast tip in the northeast Sierra Madre Oriental is Estanque de Norias, a small Mexican town, roughly 200 miles west of the Texas border at Laredo.
Essentially, mountains are rising up around the treeless, scrubby terrain like undulating brown walls. This parched landscape's star is known as "Agave asperrima," whose rosettes of impressive thick, leaves with blue-gray color edged with large, sharp teeth can grow five feet in width and four feet in height.
The agave is spending its whole 10- to 15-year life storing adequate sugars for the moment when it's sending a huge flowering stalk up into the sky. They stalk, which can reach the height of 20 feet, is topped by a gigantic, candelabra-like inflorescence with several flower clusters that bear innumerable tiny, bright yellow blossoms that produce quantities of sweet nectar at night. After it flowers, the plant dies.
Climate Change Making Cattle's Lives More Dangerous
Estaque de Norias, as described in E360 where this report first came out, "is an ejido," a communal agrarian community in which 300 inhabitants are making their living in the desert scrub.
The striking landscape provides barely adequate to support ejidatarios and their cattle in standard dimes, and climate change is making their living more dangerous.
According to Juan Flores-Maldonado, executive director of the Species, Society, and Habitat, a Mexican nonprofit, more popularly known by its Mexican acronym Eshac, one of the main problems is water's availability for the people and the cattle during the driest months.
He added, desertification, which is proof in a large part of the site, is the key threat to human livelihoods, as well as biodiversity in ejidos such as Estanque de Norias.
Link Between Agaves and Bats
The link between agaves and long-nosed bats, the main pollinator of the plant, is the product of thousands of years of coevolution. Since both bats and plants can benefit from their association, it is a classic instance of what biologists are calling a "mutualism."
In fact, they are regarded as "keystone mutualists" since their relationship is vital to the health and stability of their ecological communities.
Moreover, agaves also serve as root species for human communities and have been a complex part of the culture and identity of the Mexican people for millennia. Kristen Lear, who's leading Bat Conservation International's Agave Restoration Initiative said, conservation is about people, as well.
Together with Flores Maldonado, Lear belongs to a group of Mexican and American alliances working on ways to allow the ejidatarios, the agaves, and the nectar-dependent bats to share the so-called "harsh landscape."
She explained that in circumstances like this where both people and wildlife are tightly associated. Paying attention to the needs of humans, and involving local people is merely as essential as studying the needs of the wildlife.
Related report about the many uses of the Agave plant's many uses is shown on Christopher Nyerges' YouTube video below:
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