The Trump administration's plan to build a new section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in San Rafael Valley is receiving backlash from critics who decry the move as an expensive and unneeded endeavor with potentially disastrous environmental implications.
What's happening?
As the Guardian reported, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is accepting bids from private companies to construct around a 25-mile portion of the southern border wall near Tucson, Arizona.
The CBP says it works with federal, tribal, state, and local agencies to consider potential cultural, socioeconomic, and environmental impacts involving border wall systems — which began to go up with concerted efforts toward limiting immigration during the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman administrations in the mid-1900s, per Time Magazine.
However, critics aren't convinced this project can be accomplished without severe environmental consequences and believe border security can be achieved through other means.
"Even when numbers were the highest, people were crossing in areas that already had a border wall," said Sierra Club borderlands coordinator Erick Meza, who explained that blocking the valley would be "catastrophic for the environment and wildlife," per the Guardian.
Why is this important?
With the wall sealing around 63% of the Arizona border, per the Guardian, conservationists say passage through the San Rafael Valley — one of the largest intact grasslands in the state — is more important than ever for the biodiverse creatures that call the region home.
Predators such as mountain lions, wolves, bears, ocelots, and jaguars sometimes travel hundreds of miles to find food and water and to breed, and a warming climate has supercharged extreme weather events like droughts in the region, threatening their survival.
When a species is lost, its absence can have ripple effects that lead to the degradation of ecosystems, leaving crops more vulnerable to pests and increasing the risk of disease spread.
Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager at Sky Island Alliance, told the Guardian that the proposed wall portion would block a crucial migration corridor, cutting animals off from the Santa Cruz River. "It's an expensive, unnecessary, and environmentally disastrous project," Harrity said. "If completed, this wall will sever a continent."
What is being done about this?
Animal crossings and habitat-connecting corridors can help ensure the creatures we share the planet with have access to resources while limiting the potential for deadly human-animal encounters, and trail cameras are among the tools we have to gather data.
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Definitely 💯 Myles Traphagen, borderlands director for the Wildlands Network, suggested to the Guardian that trail cameras near the border led to an important insight.
When wall posts were accidentally placed five or six inches apart rather than four, animals could generally navigate through. That distance had no impact on whether humans could get through or not, so if the project continues, it might be worth reexamining the spacing of the posts.
"That's probably $30m worth of steel there," Traphagen said of the potential savings, adding that more than 1,000 videos haven't recorded a human crossing.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) suggested border security could also be improved through addressing the root causes of mass migration and improving the legal immigration system, along with continued investments in border security for law enforcement.
You can make your voice heard on issues that matter to you by contacting your representatives.
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