Holley: Most of native habitat already gone
managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Although the refuge was quiet and almost deserted on the muggy weekday afternoon I visited, it attracts thousands of bird-watchers in the spring and fall, enthusiasts from around the world eager to catch a glimpse of some 400 species, many of which they won’t see anywhere else. I happened upon a flock of bronze cowbirds flitting about in a mesquite tree beside the trail, but I didn’t see, as far as I know, what birders call “rare vagrants,” species from elsewhere that just happen to drop by. A ranger I talked to mentioned the northern jacana, a wetland bird that drops by from as far away as Cuba and Panama, and the rose-throated becard from 500 miles to the south, in Mexico. (I had to look up both; they’re beautiful.)
‘Refuge … their doom’
These days the denizens of this subtropical ecosystem, and the people who care about them, face a far more invasive force than a gnat-swatting, note-scribbling hiker from the big city. If President Donald Trump gets to build the “big, beautiful wall” he has promised, the Department of Homeland Security will drive the 18-foot-tall barrier straight through this refuge and others nearby, through what a local congressman calls “these national treasures and sacred places.” Most of the Santa Ana refuge would be on the other side of the concrete and iron-bollard wall; its visitors’ center would be on this side. Presumably, there would be a gate.
Without venturing into contentious border-wall politics, it’s pretty obvious that a barrier changes things drastically. Birds, rare vagrants and otherwise, can fly over, but endangered ocelots, beautiful spotted creatures that resemble big house cats, cannot. Nor can the jaguarundi, a small-dun-colored wildcat that favors lowland brush areas close to a source of running water. They’ll be cut off from their water source, or, if the Rio Grande floods, they’ll be trapped.
“The refuge that was built to save them ends up being their doom” said Jim Chapman, vice president of the Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, a nonprofit group that advocates for the Valley’s native habitat. In a phone conversation earlier this week, Chapman pointed out that it’s not just the Santa Ana refuge that’s threatened. “There are 20 refuge tracts in Hidalgo County alone that would be affected by a border wall,” he said.
In the little border town of Progreso, near the refuge, is a restored mission-style depot that served the San Benito & Rio Grande Valley Railroad in the 1920s. Now owned by a private company, the tidy, little structure is a reminder that the Valley was pretty much quasi-desert rangeland less than a century ago, before land developers enticed potential buyers from the Midwest and elsewhere to board special trains and come investigate the “Magic Valley.” An old chamber of commerce promotional film available on YouTube reminded Midwesterners that “while it’s freezing in Chicago, it’s summer in the Valley.”
Into those early decades of the 20th century, wilderness areas were the norm, not the vanishing exception. They’re pre-Texas, pre-Mexico, pre-history. Now that the Valley is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, 95 percent of native habitat is gone, converted into agricultural usage or urban sprawl.
The true cost
Standing on the quiet bank of the river, thick forest on this side and green farmland on the Mexican side, I saw no drug smugglers, human traffickers or undocumented border-crossers scuttling through the brush. That’s not to say, of course, that they don’t venture into the refuge, perhaps near the little bluff where I stood. But Homeland Security is building a wall through Santa Ana not for tactical reasons but because it’s comparatively easy. Building on government property means officials can avoid having to deal with landowners up and down the river who resent having their property seized and are likely to sue.
A wall is not the only way to achieve border security, but unlike drones or sensors or high technology, it’s a symbol as much as it is a barrier. A multibillion-dollar wall will never go away, ever. Wildlife will. A wall’s effect on ocelots and rabbits and old-growth forests might make us ponder, to borrow from Thoreau, “the true cost of a thing.”