Border Fence Seen As Threat to Wildlife

[XemaSab]

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Nancy Brown drives the government truck slowly past mossy ponds, thick shrouds of beard-like Spanish moss and majestic ebony trees, gleefully identifying the song of the kiskadee and the gurgling call of the chachalaca.

As the truck rounds a bend near the greenish-brown Rio Grande, a bobcat scampers ahead, disappearing into the lush subtropical foliage. Lizards dart about. A tortoise lazes in the sun. Somewhere in the forest, well-camouflaged by evolution, are ocelots and jaguarundi, both of them endangered species of cats.

These are some of the natural wonders in the Rio Grande Valley that Brown and other wildlife enthusiasts fear could be spoiled by the fences and adjacent roads the U.S. government plans to erect along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants and smugglers.

Environmentalists have spent decades acquiring and preserving 90,000 riverfront acres of Texas scrub and forest and protecting their wildlife. Now they fear the hundreds of miles of border fences will undo their work and kill some land animals by cutting them off from the Rio Grande, the only source of fresh water.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Border-Fence-Wildlife.html

---

This would be an environmental and economic disaster for the region.

There are better ways of controlling immigration than bulldozing large areas of endangered habitat with no environmental review.

Please call or write your legislators in opposition to this plan!

[ThomCat]

1. Unfortunately, we can be sure that politics and fearmongering

will trump wildlife and the environment. :(

[Richard McBeef]

2. Legal means of immigration must be streamlined

It's disgraceful how long immigrants have to wait for our federal government to finish their paperwork. We need legal immigrants, not fences and slow government workers.

[va4wilderness]

3. It's so obvious

Wildlife has to migrate! Don't mess with Mother Nature!

[XemaSab]

5. Not just migrate... wildlife needs a place to live!

If you look at an air photo of the Rio Grande area of Texas and Mexico, the river is a huge green swath in a brown landscape. There is no other habitat for a LONG ways around on either side of the river.

[rodeodance]

4. article yest. saying DHS doe not approval from ANYone!

[Honeycombe8]

6. If it's any indication...I'm in favor of a physical fence, but....

if it were to interfere with wildlife conservation or the environment, I would come down on the side of the conservationists and environmentalists...for the area involved. I don't think most people in favor of the physical fence would feel that way, though.

I think it's only a few miles that involves this conservation area, though. That area could be guarded by other means, with the physical fence covering most of the other areas.

[LiberalFighter]

7. They need one of them fences that repel humans but allows wildlife to pass thru.

[XemaSab]

8. What about humans who want to watch wildlife?

:shrug:

[Robb]

9. Actually, there are fences like that here in CO

We've been monkeying with the idea along the highways for about a decade. Best ones right now have earth ramps on one side that allow deer and elk to walk up on the highway side and jump off -- and video shows they actually do it -- but it's too big of a pain to leap up the other way.

It's helped keep wildlife that do get on the roadways from getting trapped there by fences. Don't know about turtles and rare cats, though. :shrug: