GUADALUPE CANYON, Ariz. (AP) – Work crews set off explosions of dynamite in the remote and rugged southeast corner of Arizona, forever reshaping the landscape as they pulverize mountain tops in a rush to build more President Donald Trump’s border wall before his term ends next month.
Each explosion in Guadalupe Canyon releases puffs of dust as workers level the earth to make way for 9-meter-tall steel columns near the New Mexico line. Heavy machinery crawls along roads carved into rocky slopes as a tap-tap opens holes for posts on the property of the United States Bureau of Land Management.
Trump has ramped up construction of border walls in his final year, mostly in wildlife sanctuaries and government-owned Indigenous lands in Arizona and New Mexico, avoiding legal fights for private land in crossing areas. busiest in Texas. The work has caused environmental damage, preventing animals from moving freely and marking unique mountain and desert landscapes that conservationists fear will be irreversible. The administration says it protects national security, citing it for abandoning environmental laws in its drive to implement an iconic immigration policy.
Environmentalists hope President-elect Joe Biden stops the work, but it could be difficult and costly to do quickly and could still leave pillars towering over sensitive border areas.
The worst damage is occurring along the Arizona border, from century-old saguaro cacti toppled in the Western Desert to shrunken ponds of endangered fish in the eastern canyons. Recent construction has cordoned off what was the last great unblocked river in the southwest. It is more difficult for desert turtles, the occasional ocelot, and the world’s smallest owls to cross the border.
“The interconnected landscapes that span two countries are being converted to brownfields,” said Randy Serraglio of the Tucson Center for Biological Diversity.
In the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge near Guadalupe Canyon, biologist Myles Traphagen said field cameras captured 90% less movement of animals like mountain lions, bobcats and javelins resembling to pigs in the past three months.
“This wall is the biggest obstacle to the movement of wildlife that we have ever seen in this part of the world,” said Traphagen of the nonprofit Wildlands Network. “It changes the evolutionary history of North America.”
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service established a nearly 10 km2 sanctuary in 1982 to protect water resources and endangered native fish. Various hummingbirds, bees, butterflies and bats also live there.
Since U.S. Customs and Border Protection contractors began building a new stretch of wall in October, environmentalists estimate that millions of gallons of groundwater have been pumped out to mix cement and spray on the roads of dusty earth.
Solar power is now pumping water into a shrinking pond under rustling poplar trees. Bullfrogs croak and Yaqui topminnows squirm in the pool once fed only by natural artesian wells drawing ancient water from an aquifer.
A 3-mile (5-kilometer) barrier has cordoned off a wildlife migration corridor between the Sierra Madre in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains to the north, threatening species like the endangered Leopard Frog Chiricahua and the Blue-Gray Aplomado Falcon. .
The Trump administration claims to have walked 692 kilometers of the $ 15 billion wall and promises to reach 725 kilometers by the end of the year.
Biden’s transition officials say he’s keeping his campaign promise – “not another foot” to the wall. It’s unclear how Biden would stop construction, but it could leave projects half-finished, force the government to pay to break contracts, and anger those who see the wall as essential to border security.
“Building a wall will do little to deter criminals and cartels who seek to exploit our borders,” Biden’s transition team said. He says Biden will focus on “smart border law enforcement efforts, like investing in improving screening infrastructure at our ports of entry, which will actually keep America safe.” .
Environmentalists are hoping for an ally in Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s candidate for head of the Homeland Security Department, which oversees customs and border protection.
Until construction is halted, “every day it will be another mile more of border land plundered,” Serraglio said.
Environmental lawyer Dinah Bear said the Biden administration could terminate construction contracts, which would allow companies to seek settlements. It is not clear what that would cost as the contracts are not public, but Bear said it would be pale compared to the price of finishing and maintaining the wall. Military funds reappropriated in the context of a national emergency declared by Trump are now financing the work.
Bear, who worked on the White House Environmental Quality Council under the Republican and Democratic administrations, said she wanted Congress to set aside money to repair the damage by removing the wall in critical areas, buying more habitat and replanting slopes.
Environmentalists say the damage could be reversed at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, where thousands of tree-like saguaros have been bulldozed, some reportedly replanted elsewhere.
They say keeping the floodgates open could help mitigate damage from the dam on the San Pedro River, which flows north just below the Mexican border through the central corridor of the Sierra Sky Islands. Madre.
These high mountains have radically different ecosystems from the desert below, with 300 species of birds, including the yellow-billed cuckoo, nesting along what was the last great free-flowing river in the southwest. The raccoon-like white-nosed coati and the yellow-striped Sonoran tiger salamander also live here.
At the nearby Coronado National Monument, scientists are using cameras to document wildlife as crews prepare to begin construction. Switchbacks were cut into the mountain sides, but the 9-meter posts are not yet in place along where a Spanish expedition crossed around 1540.
The government plans to install the towering pillars 10 centimeters (10 centimeters) apart where there are now vehicle barriers a few feet high with openings large enough to allow large cats and other animals to pass each other for s ‘mate and hunt.
Biologist Emily Burns, of the Sky Island Alliance nonprofit, said the construction would harm the owl-elves, the smallest in the world standing less than five inches tall. The birds are too small to fly over the fence and probably wouldn’t know how to squeeze through.
“This type of large-scale disturbance can push a species over the edge, even if it is not threatened,” said Louise Misztal, executive director of the alliance.
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