South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
In rush forwall, nature is crushed
Contractors scar landscape to build US border barrier
GUADALUPECANYON, Ariz. — Work crews ignite dynamite blasts in the remote and rugged southeast corner of Arizona, forever reshaping the landscape as they pulverize mountaintops in a rush to build more of President Donald Trump’s border wall before his term ends next month.
Each blast in Guadalupe Canyon releases puffs of dust as workers level land to make way for 30-foottall steel columns near the New Mexico line. Heavy machines crawl over roads gouged into rocky slopes while one tap- tap- taps open holes for posts on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property.
Trump has expedited border wall construction in his last year, mostly in wildlife refuges and Indigenous territory the government owns in Arizona and New Mexico, avoiding the legal fights over private land in busier crossing areas of Texas. Thework has caused environmental damage, preventing animals from moving freely and scarring unique mountain and desert landscapes in ways conservationists fear could be irreversible. The administration says it’s protecting national security, citing it to waive environmentallawsin its drive to fulfill a signature immigration policy.
Environmentalists hope President-elect Joe Biden will stop the work, but that couldbedifficultandexpensive to do quickly and may still leave pillars towering over sensitive borderlands.
The worst damage is along Arizona’s border, from century-old saguaro cacti toppled in thewestern desert to shrinking ponds of endangered fish in eastern canyons. Recent construc
tion has sealed offwhatwas the Southwest’s last major undammed river. It’s more difficult for desert tortoises, the occasionalocelotandthe world’s tiniest owls to cross the boundary.
“Interconnected landscapes that stretch across two countries are being converted into industrial wastelands,” said Randy Serraglio of the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson.
In the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge near Guadalupe Canyon, biologist Myles Traphagen said field cameras have captured 90% less movement by animals likemountain lions, bobcats and pig-like javelinas over the past threemonths.
“This wall is the largest impediment to wildlife movement we’ve ever seen in this part of the world,” said Traphagen of the nonprofit Wildlands Network. “It’s altering the evolutionary history of NorthAmerica.”
TheU.S. FishandWildlife Service in 1982 established the nearly 4-square-mile refuge to protect water resources and endangered native fish. Diverse hummingbirds, bees, butterflies and bats also live there.
Since contractors for U.S. Customs and Border Protection began building a new stretch of wall there in October, environmentalists estimate that millions of gallonsof groundwater have beenpumpedtomixcement
and spray down dusty dirt roads.
Solar power now pumps water into a shrinking pond underneath rustling cottonwood trees. Bullfrogs croak and Yaqui topminnows wiggle through the pool once fed by natural artesian wells pulling ancient water froman aquifer.
A 3- mile barrier has sealed off a migratory corridor for wildlife between Mexico’s SierraMadre and theRockyMountains to the north, threatening species like theendangeredChiricahua leopard frog and bluegray aplomado falcon.
The Trump administration says it’s completed 430 miles of the $15 billion wall and promises to reach 450 miles by year’s end.
Biden transition officials say he stands by his campaign promise — “not another foot” of wall. It’s unclear how Biden would stop construction, but it could leave projects halffinished, force the government to pay to break contracts and anger those who consider the wall essential to border security.
“Building a wall will do little to deter criminals and cartels seeking to exploit our borders,” Biden’s transition team has said. It says Biden will focus on “smart border enforcement efforts, like investments in improving screening infrastructure atourportsof entry, thatwill actuallykeepAmericasafer.”
Environmentalists hope for an ally in Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection.
Until construction is stopped, “every day, it will be another mile of borderlands being trashed,” Serraglio said.
Environmental lawattorney Dinah Bear said Biden’s administration could terminate building contracts, which would allow companies to seek settlements. What that would cost isn’t clear because the contracts aren’t public, but Bear said itwould pale in comparison to the price of finishing and maintaining the wall. Military funds reappropriated under anationalemergency declared byTrump are now funding thework.
Bear, who worked at the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality under Republican and Democratic administrations, said she wants to see Congress set aside money to repair damage by removing thewall in critical areas, buying more habitat and
replanting slopes.
Ecologists say damage could be reversed in Organ Pipe CactusNationalMonument, where thousands of tree-like saguaroswere bulldozed, withsomereportedly replanted elsewhere.
They say keeping floodgates open could help ease damage done by damming the San Pedro River, which runs north from just below theMexican border through the central corridor of the SierraMadre’s “SkyIslands.”
These high mountains have ecosystems dramatically different from the desert below, with 300 bird species, including the yellow-billed cuckoo, nesting along what was the Southwest’s last major free- flowing river. The white-nosed, racoon-like coatiandthe yellow-striped Sonoran tiger salamander also live there.
In the nearby Coronado NationalMonument, scientists are using cameras to document wildlife as crews prepare to start building. Switchbacks have been slashed into mountainsides,
but30-footpostsaren’tyetup. The government plans to install the towering pillars
4 inches apart where there are now vehicle barriers a couple of feet high with openings large enough to allow large cats and other animals to cross tomateand hunt.
Biologist Emily Burns of the nonprofit Sky Island Alliance said construction will hurt elf owls, the world’s littlest at less than 5 inches tall. Thebirds are too small to fly over the fence and likelywouldn’t knowto squeeze through.
“This kind of largescale disruption can push a species to the brink, even if they aren’t threatened,” said Louise Misztal, alliance executive director.