MESCALERO TURN UP THE HEAT ON SPACEX BOCA CHICA PLANS

By Mecalero

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

This "whole bunch of nothing" and "it's nothing but a bunch of sand" comment by city officials is an example of why the city of Brownsville tends to lag behind the other major cities in the Valley. It demonstrates a lack of knowledge about where they live and how to best exploit it.

The McAllen visitor center actively promotes ecotourism in the Valley, even to the point of sponsoring trips by tour organizers, confident that when they see what the Valley has to offer they will bring tours to the area and the center will recoup anything they spent. Weslaco has three internationally known birding sites, Harlingen has the Rio Grande Valley Nature Festival, perhaps one of the largest in the country.

These communities support these entities because they know they bring millions of dollars into the community.

Brownsville has "a whole bunch of nothing" and a "bunch of sand" (note to city govenment-- 50 years ago SPI was a bunch of sand).

The Brownsville Visitors and Convention Center did sponsor a nature festival but the current director is more interested in golf then in nature so we got a golf tournement instead, the Ladies PGA event. That didn't work out so well, did it?

A rocket launch will certainly attract visitors until the novelty wears off, then what. I know that the launches in Florida continued to attract large crowds but I don't think you can compare the thrill of a manned shuttle launch to watching a cargo of groceries and a toaster go up after you have already seen one launch.

Ecotourism, on the other hand, is a sustainable business that has a minimal impact on the envroiment and, in fact, often results in improvements to wild areas through better management.

And it is not just a one shot and you have seen it all thing, either. Ecotourist, which in the Valley means birders, will return, often many times because the attractions change with the seasons. We have birds that are summer residents and birds that are here only in the winter. We have migrants that pass through in the fall and in spring. We have strays from Mexico and even Central America and, in at least one case, South America.

Each of these events attracts new visitors and brings back many return visitors. True, most of the jobs created by visitors are low paying service jobs but they are jobs and they will benefit the area.

However as ecotourism grows there is a call for biologist and natualist, park managers, tour leaders, natural landscape specialist and a host of other higher paying positions that can be filled from the community and a lot sooner then we will be providing rocket scientists to SpaceX, I'll bet.

And these are jobs that can be taken all over the country. If you are trained as a rocket launch specialist and SpaceX closes it's Brownsville facility where are you going to go? It's not like you can hire on at the launch site in the next town over.

Maybe you can sell bottle rockets on the 4th of July. Brownsville does have two fine ecotourism sites in Sabal Palm Saanctuary and the Resaca De Las Palmas state park, a world birding center site. What has the city of Brownsville done to support these sites?

I know the city has contributed some money to the restoration of the Rabb Plantation House at Sabal Palm but this is a historical renovation and not related to ecotourism though I hear it may one day be the sites visitor center.

it seems like ecotourism isn't sparkley enough for the community leaders.