Santa Anas Last Stand? National Wildlife Refuge
Ken Merritt, 65, knows what it’s like to stand between a threatened wildlife habitat and a border wall. In 2007, the Bush administration wanted to construct an 18-foot wall through the federally protected wildlife refuges in the lower Rio Grande Valley that Merritt managed for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). When it fell to Merritt to sign off on an environmental assessment for the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, he refused — an act of conscience that cost him his job.
When I reported in late July that the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge was once again under threat, I was reminded of Merritt and the hard lessons he learned about how federal bureaucracies laid the groundwork for the more than 670 miles of border wall built during the last decade.
After Merritt left USFWS, several segments of wall were built through tracts that he’d formerly managed. But the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — the most-visited and well-known refuge in the Rio Grande Valley — was left unscathed largely because the Department of Homeland Security ran out of funding and the Obama administration was less willing to wall off a wildlife refuge. But now President Trump is anxious to make good on his signature campaign promise of building a “big, beautiful wall” and Santa Ana is in his crosshairs. Can the refuge survive?
Merritt who still lives in the Rio Grande Valley and now works for the Texas Department of Transportation, said federal wildlife managers trying to save what’s left of the region’s threatened habitat have largely been silenced in the name of border security. He keeps in touch with a few of his former colleagues and friends who work in the wildlife corridor along the Rio Grande.
https://www.texasobserver.org/santa-anas-last-stand/
