After prolonged neglect, Mexico’s Colorado River Delta is beginning to teem with life. This summer Ridgway’s Rails and Least Bitterns prowled in lush marshes. People jumped into the river’s water to escape recordbreaking heat, or enjoyed picnics on the shore. Fish long absent shimmered in sunlit water.
This life aquatic was unthinkable until recently. Beginning in 1922, water-sharing agreements among the seven U.S. states in the Colorado River basin and Mexico claimed nearly every drop of the once-mighty waterway, which begins high in the Rocky Mountains and wends 1,450 miles to northwest Mexico, where it empties into the Sea of Cortez. Over ensuing decades,
