Wall’s biggest obstacle is Texas landscape

WASHINGTON — Santa Elena Canyon, part of Big Bend National Park in Texas, is known for its red rock cliffs that drop more than 1,000 feet into the Rio Grande River.

If President Trump builds a wall through unfenced sections of the U.S.-Mexico border, Santa Elena Canyon will present a formidable obstacle, but not the only one. The rugged landscape of south Texas might be Trump’s biggest challenge.

“When you get to Santa Elena Canyon, you have a sheer wall that is hundreds of feet tall,” said Scott Nicol, a resident of McAllen, Texas, and co-chairman of the Sierra Club’s Borderlands Campaign. “How are you going to plunk down a wall in that kind of topography?”

Texas shares more than 1,200 miles with Mexico, but only 110 miles of that is fenced. Much of the rest is either private property or protected public lands, such as steep cliffs at Big Bend, marshes at the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge or the braided channel of the Rio Grande as it empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

In November, a video team from the Brookings Institution visited the border region and brought back a bird’s-eye view, using a drone camera. The video captures a landscape that meanders with the Rio Grande, passing through numerous habitats, alternately stark and lush.

Brookings videographer Chris Peters said, “If you see it in person, it’s so much more clear how challenging it would be to build a wall there, and how unrealistic it is.”

Last year, Nicol used a Freedom of Information Act request to get a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers map of where the government plans to build 33 miles of wall in 15 segments in the Rio Grande Valley. The corps has recommended building the wall through Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, a 797-acre bird preserve. The wall also would run through the nearby National Butterfly Center, a private nature sanctuary that, in December, sued the Department of Homeland Security over its border wall plans and alleged trespass onto its property.