Walling out wildlife

Border fence would wall off jaguars, ocelots, gray wolves

Ask Pelosi to support House bill to stop Homeland Security end-run around environmental protections

The rugged and diverse ecosystems of the U.S.-Mexico border area are under assault. A failed border policy has redirected migrant traffic into rugged and isolated public lands. Congress has mandated construction of expensive walls that are of questionable value for dealing with immigration - but that surely fragment ecosystems. Now Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has invoked statutory authority and completely waived all environmental laws in order to build a 15-foot-high, impermeable steel barrier along the edge of the San Pedro River and a vehicle barrier in the river channel itself - in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The San Pedro, the last perennial free-flowing river in the southwest, is home to a great diversity of mammals, reptiles, insects, and plants, and the river and its watershed are internationally recognized as one of the most biologically diverse areas in North America. It's an eco-tourism hotspot and a vital cross-border habitat link between Mexico and the United States.

Chertoff took this action under Section 102 of the Real ID Act of 2005, which authorizes the secretary of homeland security to waive all other laws to ensure the expeditious construction of border infrastructure projects. This waiver overrides such vital environmental protections as the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Clean Water Act.

Last summer the Border Patrol had asked the BLM to prepare an environmental assessment of the proposed construction. BLM prepared a document, but without sufficient analysis or any public input as required by NEPA. The Sierra Club joined Defenders of Wildlife in filing suit to challenge the decision. Homeland Security went forward anyway, and when the bulldozers started rolling, we sought and received a temporary restraining order. This short delay proved too much for Chertoff, who invoked the waiver as a matter of "human life or lizards". He neglected to mention the birds, bears, bats, frogs, foxes, jaguars, ocelots, deer, snakes, plants, and hundreds of other creatures that would be affected, and he failed to demonstrate how human life was at risk.

The construction stems from the Secure Fence Act, passed by Congress in 2006, which mandates the construction of 700 miles of double-layered wall along the roughly 2,000-mile border, across parts of California, New Mexico, and Texas, and most of Arizona. This wall would block border wildlife from traveling freely through this rich habitat. Some endangered species, such as the jaguar, the ocelot, and the Sonoran pronghorn, would be prevented from naturally recovering in the U.S. if walls along the border continue to be constructed. The Real ID Act compounds the problem by letting the government off the hook from taking these impacts into account.

Real ID and California

Real ID was initially passed in 2005 to bypass opposition by the California Coastal Commission to the backfilling of an area called Smugglers Gulch in San Diego. Once the gulch is backfilled, the Department of Homeland Security plans to build a 15-foot wall across the former gulch. This project has not been completed, but would be likely to destroy the biological make-up of the Tijuana River Estuary Preserve, which is directly adjacent to the gulch, due to an increase in sediment deposits from the backfilled area.

Californians should also be concerned over impacts to the Otay Mountain Wilderness that touches the border just southeast of San Diego. This wilderness area (designated in 1999) could have a permanent road put through it and its landscape scarred by removal of fill for fence construction.

California still has many border areas that are not walled off and that still allow wildlife to migrate. Real ID, however, gives an appointed official unrestrained power to build walls regardless of the impacts. If Section 102 of Real ID is repealed, the government could be forced to go back and reevaluate projects along the entire border!

On the line in Texas

In Texas hundreds of miles of border wall would parallel the Rio Grande, tearing through habitat critical for the survival of federally endangered species such as the ocelot and jaguarundi as well as migratory birds, bats, and butterflies. In south Texas, where the Secure Fence Act calls for over 200 miles of border wall, the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge would be torn apart. The refuge consists of separate tracts linked by the river. Without access to the river, ocelots and jaguarundi would be cut off from water to drink, sufficient territory for hunting, and potential mates, and would likely be driven to extinction in the United States. During fall and spring migrations millions of birds from the Central and Mississippi Flyways funnel through the area on their way to and from Central and South America. Migrating birds, bats, and butterflies require places where they can rest and refuel during their journeys. Clearing miles and miles of habitat to build walls and roads would result in increasing stress on various migrating species that may end up without the energy that they need to survive the flight. Clearing riverbanks of vegetation would also result in a great deal of erosion, muddying the river that is not only vital for wildlife, but also the primary source for irrigation and drinking water for the million residents of the Rio Grande Valley.

WhatYouCanDo

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona) has introduced HR 2593, the Borderlands Conservation and Security Act. This bill will repeal the Secure Fence Act and Section 102 of the Real ID Act, and will ensure that land managers, traditional people along the border, and the public will be able to provide input on any infrastructure projects proposed for wildlife refuges, national parks and monuments, national forests, BLM lands and tribal and private lands. The Department of Homeland Security will no longer be able to simply override important environmental protections.

This bill will also provide mitigation and monitoring money for imperiled species along the border, species already so endangered that the border wall might just tip them finally towards extinction. This piece of legislation is also crucial to protecting special places like the San Pedro River, to ensure that the long-term effects of border infrastructure are understood before the bulldozers move in.

Contact your own congressmember, and also House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at:

House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
(202)224-3121
www.house.gov/writerep

Ask them to co-sponsor this bill. (We have included post-card inserts in some copies of this Yodeler. If you receive one, please send it in - or, even more effectively, send in your own hand-written letter.)

For the text of the bill, see: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.02593:

For more information, contact the Rincon Group at (520)620-6401 or email rinconborder -at- yahoo.com

Border Committee, Rincon Group of the Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter, Arizona