Border Fence Takes Toll on Wildlife

Friday, 10 December 2010 21:27

By Jackie Tran

Endangered animals have it bad on both sides of the border.

Construction of the border fence for security reasons has caused a widespread environmental impact and now money has been allocated to address the most serious problems.

The extent of damage to the animal habitats is extreme enough to warrant $6.8 million from the federal government for eight Southwestern conservation projects, six of which are in Arizona.

“The projects we are announcing today are, in effect, part of a down payment on mitigating the impact on wildlife and its habitat from the on-going effort to secure our southern border,” said Rhea Suh, assistant secretary for policy, management and budget at the Department of the Interior.

“It [the border] has increased vehicular traffic, both border patrol and public,” Matt Clark, a representative for Defenders of Wildlife in Tucson said.  Smuggler vehicle chases and other illegal activities have caused severe damage to the land.

Some of the wildlife affected includes ocelots, bats, jaguars, desert tortoise and several endangered fish in the San Bernardino Valley in Arizona, Clark said. The border fence has augmented flooding issues and prevents many wild animals from crossing in their natural habitat.

Direct human activity is not the only cause of damage to the surrounding environment at the U.S.-Mexico border line.

“When there’s no vegetation to soak up the water it runs off the dirt and into the washes and in many instances, cuts down more rapidly than it would otherwise,” Clark said. Heavy storms create the most evident erosion damage, which creates an incision. The erosion is carried down in the form of sediment.

“The debris is blocked by the wall and creates a dam effect so the water is diverted around the water crossings and erodes the scourings adjacent to the washing,” Clark said. The gates that can be lifted during storm events might be in the works by Homeland Security, he added.

The Organ Pipe National Monument has suffered major flood damage from the wall. In Nogales, the same storm created a flood where the fence was blocked with debris and caused a back up on the Mexican side, Clark said. The solid concrete wall at the port of entry was about five feet tall and created a dam-like effect, causing about $8 million worth of property damage.

The Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument Biological Opinion has been allotted $980,000. Some of the funds will help replant around 200 columnar cacti that were moved and stored when the border fence was built, Lee Baiza, the monument’s superintendent said. Some of the funds will manage roads and repair land by the fence near Lukeville, Ariz., which was damaged by construction.

The San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona will use $657,000 for restoration. An additional $441,000 will be used to study four federally protected Rio Yaqui fish species and four sensitive fish species there.

The Coronado National Memorial Agave Restoration program in Arizona will use $274,873 to plant agaves to make up for the ones destroyed during border construction.

“The border wall is a discontinuous barrier, but there are tens of continuous miles of wall that are impermeable to most terrestrial wildlife,” Clark said.

“That causes extensive wildlife fragmentation,” he added, “severing wildlife corridors that extend across wildlife boundaries. It cumulatively has permanently converted many hundreds of acres of wildlife habitat.”

Here are the statistics from the release:

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