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Cecilia Fischer in a canyon of the Sierra de la Giganta
Cecilia Fischer
Cecilia Fischer was born in Mexico and has lived in Loreto for the last 38 years. Her passions have always been Nature and how people respond to it. Many of her neighbors know she earned a Sociology degree in the United States (at Grinnell College, Iowa) but few know she also earned her private pilot’s license at age 15. Cecilia is licensed by the Secretary of Tourism as a tour guide and instructs other naturalist guides in Loreto. She is also a licensed bilingual translator (Spanish-English).
Over the years Cecilia has promoted Baja California tourism in travel media such as ABC’s Good Morning America, Alaska Airlines’ in-flight magazine, the New York Times, Discover Loreto, Baja Nomad, The Baja Western Onion, San Diego Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Diario El Independiente, El Organismo, and others.
She has worked in aquaculture companies in the Mexican Pacific coast and in non-profit organizations such as Pronatura Noroeste in San Luis Rio Colorado (training fieldworkers to become bird guides), Costasalvaje in Cabo Pulmo (protecting the delicate reef from developers), and Cantaro Azul (applying technologies for safe and clean water to benefit ranchers of the Sierra La Giganta).
Cecilia was the first employee of Loreto Bay Company, as its Government and Community Liaison, and then later in its Sustainability Department from 2002 to 2007. During that time, Cecilia directed many projects with the community: she started recycling in Loreto (where Styrofoam was recycled for the very first time in all of Baja California peninsula and still is), created alternative housing for Mexican free-tailed bats in Nopolo with a structure for 17,000 bats under the direction of Winifred Frick of UC Santa Cruz, moved 412 reptiles from the area of Agua Viva to the areas of the proposed Nopolo Park, and helped to get funding studies needed for creating the Ecological Ordinance for the Municipality of Loreto so that air and water would be protected as Loreto grows. Her work with the community also resulted in enactment of a Land Use Ordinance for the Municipality of Loreto which requires that interested developers observe the limitations of land, and fresh water in the desert by eliciting community consensus on proposed developments around estuaries, coastline and waterways.
Setting up, at a community-supported agriculture event, to demonstrate the use of local wild plants in cooking. Cecilia’s name for this contribution was “What we do to the soil we do to the sea.”
Cecilia’s groundbreaking work included organizing the first Eco-Tourism Charrette of Baja California Sur in Loreto. The results of the charrette became the grant write-up with which the University of La Paz obtained federal funding to help ranchers in the Sierra de la Giganta gain micro-financing. This enabled them to continue their trades and artisanal crafts from the days of Jesuit missionaries, keeping traditions of the Sierra alive.
In the year before Loreto Bay Company closed, Cecilia’s work underwent transition into the Loreto Bay Foundation, which was directed by Mark Spalding from The Ocean Foundation. In October 2015, with the mentorship and support of home owners in Loreto Bay Villages and The Ocean Foundation, Keep Loreto Magical was born and Cecilia became its Coordinator of Activities in Loreto.