Border wall work is full steam ahead
At a secluded spot in southeast Arizona, the San Pedro River flows north from Mexico and crosses the United States border, running under a majestic canopy of tall cottonwood trees.
The river’s winding path is a migration gateway and critical habitation for hundreds of animal species. The National Audubon Society for Arizona says 40% of bird species in North America spend part of their lives on the San Pedro River at some point.
But the U.S. Border Patrol sees the river as a natural gateway of drug smuggling and illegal immigration into the United States. In the waning days of the Trump administration, construction crews are rapidly building a 30-foot high steel bollard-style wall across the riverbed. Usually, the only sound you hear is the wind whipping through the golden leaves overhead. As you hike toward the spot these days, the clattering sound of construction crews takes over.
Environmentalists say the work disrupts the migration patterns that rely on the river. Customs and Border Protection says border wall projects have gone through “Environmental Stewardship Plans” to analyze and minimize the environmental impact in the area where construction is happening. And that part of the environmental impact analysis includes studying how wildlife may be affected by the projects.
The work is part of a final sprint to complete as many miles of border wall as possible before President- elect Joe Biden takes office on Jan. 20.
As of December 18, construction crews had completed 438 miles of border wall since January 2017, according to Customs and Border Protection. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents border patrol agents, celebrates the construction and hopes Biden will finish what Trump started.
Environmentalists and other activists could not disagree more. Kate Scott, the executive director and president of the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center, sees the wall construction as a disruptive threat to wildlife that rely on migrating through this desert region.
“I feel great pain in my heart,” said Scott. “It’s like driving a stake through my heart because the river should be allowed to be, and not have this monstrosity. This wall of shame.”
Anti-wall activists such as John Kurc have spent months documenting what they describe as an environmental catastrophe at the construction sites. Kurc travels the southern border capturing video images of the explosive detonations used by crews to carve their way through the rugged terrain.
“This is sickening and a waste of money,” wrote Kurc on a Twitter post earlier this month showing drone footage of what he described as blast damage in Arizona’s Guadalupe Canyon, another location designated by the administration for the wall.
The Wildlands Network, a conservation nonprofit, put up trail cameras when construction began in the San Bernardino Valley in late 2019 to monitor changes to animal migration in the area, which is also home to the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge. As of last week, “all connectivity and movement between the United States and Mexico in southeastern Arizona has been stopped dead in its tracks,” Myles Traphagen, who coordinates Wildlands Network’s borderlands program, wrote in a blog post. The detection of most species has declined, he wrote, and mountain lions who normally roam across the border are now pacing back and forth along the wall.