Donald Trump is advancing with a new part of the border wall that will threaten wild animals in a remote area where many rare animals are – but very few people – wander.
Customs and border protection (CBP) he called Private Sectors for Private Sectors for the submission of the contract to raise almost 25 miles of barriers at the American-Mexico border, overmaked southern Tucson, Arizona, one of the Most biodiversity regions In the US.
Here are huge rolling lawn stretches through the high desert, overheated in the east and western, isolated mountain chains known as Heavenly Islands Because abruptly and spectacularly rise from the victim’s planning.
“This is the key corridor of wild animals,” said Eamon Harrity Federal Federation Manager for Sky Island of Federation, Conservation of Nephitifika, while the earth road towards the River Santa Cruz where it descends towards Mexico.
Nearby Request Runned Camera for Wild Animals, one of 65 that manages the covenant in this part of the border, where there is a long gap in the barrier, record thousands of wild animals, including bears, bobcats, sandwiches and mountain lions.
“Great predators and other animals move freely through this landscape,” said Harrity, because he replaced the batteries of the camera, a wide open landscape, which would show the border with Mexico. Harrity helps track more than 110 cameras of a wider area for the Studio Studio starting 2020. years to record the effects of Trump barriers to cross-border movements for local wild animals.
“Yes (movement) will not happen after the wall is complete,” he added from that stretch from the Arizona-Mexico border.
That ending now seems to become a reality. “CBP is for the construction of 24.7 miles of the border barrier around the international border monument 102 in the area of ​​responsibility for the Sonoit border patrol,” CBP spokesman for Guardian in the e-mail, referring to the small Stone obelisks or monumentswhich are traditionally intertwined along the international line.
Out of Valley San Rafael, the partition wall designed to keep people from the United States with a space of 30ft-high steel jobs, only four inches are impossible for all that greater than jackebbit, fast, long legs typical of the area. Once this wall of walls is also broken by a A critical corridor of wild animals For animals that migrate between Mexico and Arizona.
Erick Meza, Coordinator Borderlands to advocate the environment Sierra Club, said that it will be walled “catastrophic for the environment and wild animals”.
27. April, US House of Representatives The Committee for Protection in the Chamber presented its proposed budget, Assigning $ 46.5 billion to finance new barriers at nearly 200-mile American-Mexico border, where the wall building was a focus and a highly upset question in the first trump card and is away from complete.
The new pressure for more wall comes as unauthorized crossings that people cross on the United States or from Mexico quickly dropped last year after Joe Biden tightened the restrictions and have now reached historical shades. This noticed the CBP and trusted the inflammatory language by Trump’s white house, even as the president of “Invasion”.
“Even when the numbers were the highest, people crossed in areas that already had a border wall,” Meza said. “The San Rafael Valley never saw those numbers.”
Critics are furious.
“It’s an expensive, unnecessary and ecologically catastrophic project,” said Harrity of the barrier, which can cost up to $ 30 million per mile. “If you’re done, this wall will break the continent.”
Successful legal challenges to federal actions on the boundary can be difficult, but opponents investigate their possibilities intensively.
And high metal boundaries, which do not only interfere with animals, but, when they are under construction and patrolling, cause Huge damage And the disorder, they are not the only concerns for wildlife lawyers. Trump also announced a plan for the addition of the army and took over huge outdoors along the border.
Presidential Memorandum in April directed transfer From 60ft-width of the federal land that runs along the boundaries in California, Arizona and New Mexico, known as Roosevelt reservations, to US military control.
This could mean new military bases and insginized surfaces that are shown by state actions in Texas, created an surroundings of havoc.
Myles Traphagen, director of Borderlands for the director of Wildlands is worried that large military facilities could be built in the region, which further improve the human imprint already militarized boundaries.
“It’s an invasion,” Trafagen said. “Invasion of our public country.”
Mark Nevit, Professor of the University, said that the president appeared on the unprecedented use of the “national security language associated with executive power, (as” under attack “, which appears in the army in immigration application.” also fears That the Pentagon Fondova will be imported into several wall buildings on the mainland that will be appointed as “national defense areas”.
NOAH SCHRAMM, a strategist border policy for American civil liberties in Arizona in the planned step in militarization and warned that the troops could be used to arrest migrants and civilians to allegedly entering a limited military surface
In Arizona, 63% of the border has already been sealed, and the remaining open cross-sections are critical for wild animals, and the San Rafael Valley was one of the last intact expanse of Sonoran desert lawns in the state. The area is the mural mountains of Huachuca and Patagonia, part of the Assortment of the Heavenly Island, serve as spring stones through sharp deserts by offering a range of habitats, sources of food and animal water.
“Biological diversity is amazing here,” said Meza, from Sierra Club. Like the bears, mountain lions and wolves, there are a subtropical species such as Javelin and rare large cats – oceloti and jaguari, with natural ranges of hundreds of miles between countries in search of food, water and friends.
“This is in the heart of all these different ecosystems that gather together,” Meza added.
As Harrity of New Island Alliance performed his beaten red pickpocket through the wild, lonely construction, strange, an antelopic creature that is the fastest land mammal in America. The Valley of San Rafael enters the year of a heavy drought, he said.
“When it rains, it may look like Scotland,” he said. In dry weather as now, the valley looks more like African Savana, and the rolled hills of the home grass did not dry in soft yellow, oranges and rust. “Study in Browni,” he added, bounced toward the only greenery visible – cotton trees wraps the River Cruz River Cruz.
Harrity said that as a climate crisis, drought in the southwest, wild animals in the border region will need to move on further and further seeking food and water. 2021. Mexican gray wolf Known as mr. Goodbar He walked 23 miles along the boundary wall looking for a place to move to Mexico. After the day, he finally gave up and returned to the wilderness of Gila in Novi Mexico.
“The last thing we should do now is the wall of the hallway and varied connection,” Harrity said.
The Santa Cruz River is a vital corridor of animal migration that mixes in Mexico and back to Arizona. “The river will now be a wall on both legs of your trip,” Harrity said. In the nearby wildlife camera recently captured the video of the mountain lava carrying his award, dead coyote, in Mexico.
The valley is almost deprived of people. And it is missing the signs of migration on border areas: torn clothing on bushes, discarded backpacks and empty water bottles. In five years, the camera next to the river never captured a picture of migrants in the US, although it is one of the few parts of the valley with shade and water.
On the hill above the river Agent in the White and Green Border Patrols looked at.
Then in New Mexico, in the east, near the small town of Columbus, the Trafagen Wild Network pointed out the top of the hill the flowers flowers to the longest continuous part of the border wall in the USA. Eighty miles from three-story – high posts that cut through sand dunes and volcanic hills like giant snakes, all the way to El Paso, Texas.
As the spring wind picked up, the steel poles began to reject and hum. “When the wind really goes, it sounds like Throat singers“Said Trafagen central Asian singers who can produce a low vocal rumble and high whistling tone at the same time.
Many traces on wild networks indicate “building anomalies,” said Trafagen, where posts have misplaced five or six inches, instead of the usual four. Those extra 2ins do not affect the human transition, but can enable animals, such as Javeline and Coyotes, at least to pass. This subtle difference would also reduce the number of posts needed to build Surely a set of boundary wall. “It’s probably $ 30 million,” Trafagen said, pointing to the abandoned surface for construction from the previous Trump that contains thousands of steel pillars that agreed as Children’s construction Lincoln.
Other camera tracks are placed near open storage, resulting from a 2023 A lawsuit Requires a border patrol to open casual gates in a barrier to allow for larger animals to pass.
“This camera captured over 1,000 videos, and we have never seen a person crossing,” Trafagen said. It is pointed with a sandy washing marked with a printing paw for rabbits, coyotes and a gap. Of the eight cameras checked during a long release on the new Mexico border, he just captured all the evidence of migrants.
But in a study 2024 by Wildlands network and Sky Islands Alliance, camera activated movements along 100 miles from the wall The border showed a reduction of 86% in wildlife crossings and 100% reduction of animals such as wolves, bears, villages and jaguars.
“Trump would rather achieve cheap political points and favorable personnel news, a ferrousness of military readiness, and in the formation of our broken immigration system,” said Martin Heinrich, American Senator for New Mexico and Democrats.
“New Mexicans living on the boundaries want real solutions, such as the creation of new legal tracts for immigration, investment in the efficient protection of the law enforcement and the root causes of migration,” he added.
Return to the Valley of San Rafael, Traphagen noted that, on top of all, parts of the original film of Music Oklahoma from 1955. years! were recorded in this beautiful place.
“It will be a tragedy to see the untouched lawn … turned into a military zone,” he said.
2025-05-18 12:00:00
