A different type of wall revives dying land along Mexico border
DOUGLAS – A few miles southeast of here in the San Bernardino Valley, a barren ranch along the Mexican borderlands languished for decades, weakened by drought, overgrazing and heavy use.
Rain, which once fed its desert wetlands, had turned scant. When it did fall, it eroded washes deeper and deeper, carving arroyos that funneled water away from the landscape. Without water, the land couldn’t support vegetation.
Without vegetation, the earth couldn’t absorb rain.
The cycle persisted, until conservationists from the Cuenca Los Ojos Foun-
dation stepped in and broke it. Valer Austin, a former high-society Manhattanite, co-founded the organization to bring damaged places like this one on the San Bernardino ranch back to life.
To start, they built walls — not tall impenetrable walls, but porous rock structures called gabions, made for the earth to engulf.
Over time, the wetlands began to return and the water table rose, all amid a relentless drought.
Now the conservationists fear the solid border wall proposed by President Donald Trump, one that climbs 18 to 30 feet above the ground, could undermine their work, threatening the land’s hydrology and wildlife.
The restoration work employs concepts used by both land users and land preservers, ranchers who know the value of protecting their resources and environmentalists who, in the past, might have questioned the work of the ranchers.
Their efforts tell a different border story, one that acknowledges the needs of both security and the diverse borderland environment, where wildlife and plant species survive in a fragile balance of nature and human activity.
The restoration work
José Manuel Pérez, director of Mexican operations for the Cuenca Los Ojos Foundation, drove down a winding dirt road though grass as high as wagon wheels, past a beekeeper and a gardener.
The foundation has replanted seven species of native grasses to keep topsoil from washing away, Pérez said.
Only a few patches of barren desert remained-awaiting restoration.
His boots slopped through mud when he walked from his truck to a gabion wall where dragonflies buzzed though reeds towering over his head.
The gabion walls helped slow the flow of water, preventing erosion and filling washes with sediment. Workers used galvanized wire to build cages in wash beds and filled the cages with rocks. As sediment rose and buried the gabion walls, workers built more layers.
Smugglers used to drive up Silver Creek like it was a road, but the deep, spongy sediment prevents that now, Pérez said. A camera tower sits perched on a hill overlooking Silver Creek. Pérez doesn’t see many unauthorized border crossings at the San Bernardino ranch anymore.
In Silver Creek, the gabion walls are up to 24 feet high, Pérez said. That’s within the height specifications of the proposed border wall, but these walls are buried. In many places only the tips of the gabion structures poke out above the sediment.
The deep layers of sediment soak up water like a sponge and release it gradually so, in some areas, water now flows year-round.
“Walking through water is something really amazing for people like us who have been living in the desert all their life,” Pérez said.
An indigenous farming community, called 18 De Agosto, sits downstream from the San Bernardino ranch. Community members feared the gabion walls would dam up the water before it reached them. But the opposite happened.
“It doesn’t rush by like before,” said Alberto Teran Figueroa, a member of 18 de Agosto and a Cuenca Los Ojos Foundation employee. “It doesn’t dry up.”
More water fills his community’s well and more surface water flows for their cattle, he said.
More water flows on both sides of the border, said Bill Radke, the refuge manager at the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, which is located directly across the border from the ranch.
Having a neighbor that also heals the landscape is huge, Radke said.
More vegetation grew around gabion walls at the foundation’s ranch and the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, even amid drought, according to a study led by U.S. Geological Service scientist Laura Norman.
Wildlife along the border
A deer peered out at Pérez’s truck from the cover of brush. Then it cocked its legs and began to prance away. It stopped short of vanishing behind thicker cover, looked back and darted off.
Birds, bears, mountain lions and Chihuahua pronghorn, among other species, move through the foundation’s ranch, Radke said.
The Yaqui topminnow, an endangered mosquito-eating fish, even swims upstream to cross the border, Radke said. It eats the type of mosquito that in the early 2000s entered Arizona from Mexico carrying the West Nile virus.
The San Bernardino refuge shares a natural migratory corridor with the ranch and the two groups meet regularly to coordinate, said David Hodges, the foundation’s conservation director.
More water meant a bigger habitat for several species of endangered fish that the San Bernardino refuge protects.
Vehicle barriers line the San Bernardino ranch along the border mostly without disrupting the flow of wildlife, although certain types of barriers block the Chihuahuan pronghorn.
West of Douglas, Border Patrol agents have seen more wildlife on their imaging sensors than 10 years ago when many more migrants crossed the border illegally, said Michael Hyatt, the head Border Patrol agent at the Naco station.
“I think because you don’t have the human impact, it’s not scaring it away,” he said.
A solid border wall, or even a pedestrian fence, would harm wildlife, Pérez and Hodges said.
The habitat doesn’t stop at the border, activists say. Wildlife moves across it to find food and water.
The Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity have long advocated against pedestrian fencing because it fragments wildlife habitats.
“Pedestrian fencing is an Orwellian term. It actually functions as a wall,” said Randy Serraglio, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Farther west in Arizona, border infrastructure contributed to reducing the endangered Sonoran pronghorn’s access to water, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s recovery plan for the species. The plan applies recovery projects in Mexico and the U.S. due to the Sonoran pronghorn’s cross-border habitat.
But food and water aren’t the only reason species need to migrate across the border. Gene flow is also important to populations’ health, Radke said.
“Some of these animals are designed to move back and forth to breed,” he said. “Otherwise you have a bunch of isolated populations of inbreeding.”
Water and its power
Fish swam just below the surface of a pond where a chorus of frogs croaked. A ledge formed by years of erosion hung above it. The ground on the ledge is parched with dry, brown vegetation, a stark difference from the lush grass surrounding the pond a few feet below.
Instead of building the gabion walls even higher to reach these ledges, the foundation planted trees in most washes. The San Bernardino refuge gave hundreds of them to the Cuenca Los Ojos Foundation, Pérez said. Just like the gabion walls, trees slow water enough for sediment to settle in the current.
The San Bernardino ranch has hit a tipping point, Hodges said. Nature is taking over the restoration work.
When flash floods hit the San Bernardino Valley hard, the gabions sometimes break and are expensive to repair. Many of the trees, however, are riparian varieties and sprout more roots and grow larger if toppled by water, Pérez said.
“These floods don’t just transport water. They also transport a lot of sediment and debris,” said Stephen DeLong, a USGS geologist.
Hurricane Odile powered though the foundation’s ranch in 2014. The restoration helped the landscape weather the storm, Radke said.
Still, damage to gabion walls and new restoration cost the foundation about $500,000.
During the hurricane, debris collected in Silver Creek behind Normandystyle vehicle barriers along the border, damming up water until a steel cable connecting the barriers snapped, scattering them downstream into Mexico.
Climate change could intensify these types of events in the Southwest, scientists say.
“While the region is expected to dry out, it paradoxically is likely to see larger, more destructive flooding,” according to the federal Sonoran pronghorn recovery plan.
The design specifications for Trump’s border wall call for “surface drainage.” And existing pedestrian fencing accounts for water.
But Mexican officials of the International Boundary and Water Commission have expressed doubt about existing pedestrian fencing in the past.
The binational commission oversees the application of treaties between Mexico and the United States.
“Any structure shall not obstruct or deflect the flow of water,” said Lori Kuczmanski, a spokeswoman for the U.S. section of the IBWC.
Even so, debris has repeatedly dammed up pedestrian fences.
In 2011, flash floods carried debris to the fence where it dammed up and toppled a section of the fence, damaging Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Park officials had warned the Department of Homeland Security that it could happen.
In 2014, rainstorm runoff clogged the fence with debris built up in Nogales, Sonora. The fence burst, flooding houses in Nogales, Arizona.
About 50 miles west of the San Bernardino ranch on the U.S. side, water and debris has plugged up the fencing every year and toppled it once at San Jose Ranch since 2007.
Gates and crossing points
Down a dirt road off Highway 92, the Border Patrol parked a surveillance truck by a gate to John Ladd’s ranch. The dry June morning couldn’t subdue heavy dust kicked up by trucks on the road and the surrounding vegetation looked sparse and tired.
Monsoon storms were right around the corner, and they would create a problem for Ladd. He pointed to berms he and his dad built with their bulldozers to control erosion when the floods come.
The Border Patrol leaves gates open for several months during the monsoon season for rain to pass through on Ladd’s ranch because heavy machinery is required to open the gates.
After the fence fell in 2007, it took over five years to install a gate, Ladd said.
The government installed several newer gate designs, which should open more easily, but still run the risk of clogging up, said Hyatt, the agent. “We’ve seen full-size trees come up through these washes.”
Several years ago, the debris included trash, clothes and backpacks, among other items migrants carried when they crossed the border illegally, said Ladd’s cattle veterinarian, Gary Thrasher.
While the chances are uncertain, Hodges fears the San Bernardino ranch could wind up downstream from pedestrian fencing like Ladd’s ranch.
Trump signed a bill in May that approved over $341 million to replace 40 miles of vehicle barriers or pedestrian fencing with designs such as the existing steel bollard wall.
The pedestrian fencing also has lowwater crossing points where water flows through steel columns without a gate. The Border Patrol hires a contractor to clear out debris or sediment in theses sections, depending how far back the pedestrian fence is from the actual international boundary.
“When they built that road (along the fence) they channeled all the water to the low- water crossings instead of the high ground,” Ladd said. “As far as the low-water crossings, they’ve contributed to the erosion downstream because they’re funneling all that water to one spot instead of dissipating it.”
Hodges has had similar problems with the road along the vehicle barriers at the San Bernardino ranch, he said.
‘You got to wear out the water’
Ladd’s ranch and the foundation’s ranch are both downstream from the border and they both control erosion by slowing down water.
“My dad says you got to wear out the water,” Ladd said. They built berms to snake monsoon floods downstream to do just that.
Water from Horseshoe Draw ate away at the berms and Ladd strained two of his bulldozers trying to fix them. He partnered with Cochise County, among others, to build a flood control project, which will slow water, collect sediment and recharge the water table, like the foundation’s gabion walls, but on a larger scale.
Ladd points out that the Secretary of Homeland Security waived over 30 environmental laws through theReal ID Act to build pedestrian fencing at the border, but he and the county had to follow all environmental laws to build the flood control project.
“Hell, they waived all of the environmental laws,” Ladd said. “But we’re sill bound by them. We had to go through all those laws to build.”
A 2008 federal law, however, required the secretary of Homeland Security to consult with a range of stakeholders like the U.S. Department of the Interior, local governments and property owners in order to “minimize the impact on the environment, culture, commerce, and quality of life for the communities and residents located near the sites at which such fencing is to be constructed.”
But Ladd didn’t have input on where the gates or the low-water crossing areas were built, although his family has ranched there for over 120 years, he said.
The Center for Biological Diversity and Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., sued DHS to conduct an environmental review of its border security program, something DHS hasn’t done since 2001, said Serraglio of the center.
“Walking through water is something really amazing for people like us who have been living in the desert all their life.” José Manuel Pérez Director of Mexican operations, Cuenca Los Ojos Foundation