A River Resurrected

摘要

On May 15, through the window of a propeller plane, conservationist Francisco Zamora witnessed history in the making. Below, he watched a finger of water creep down the dry Colorado River channel and meet the tide in the Sea of Cortez. It was the first time the 1,450-mile river had been reunited with its natural terminus in more than 60 years (aside from a brief trickle during the unusually wet 1990s). Farms and cities siphon most of the river's water before it reaches Mexico, but on March 23, under a binational agreement, U.S. and Mexican officials unleashed an eight-week "pulse flow" from a small dam on the border to help restore the delta. No one knew, though, whether the water would make it that far downstream.