After I posted this evening's note, it was pointed out to me that the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson's major newspaper, is running a series this week on the border fence. Tomorrow's (Wednesday's) episode concerns itself with its ecological impacts:
======================================= Trashing the border Losing ground: Garbage from illegal crossers is killing plants and animals, but fences and traffic disrupt wildlife migration, force the clearing of vegetation and promote erosion By Stephanie Innes Arizona Daily Star Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.27.2006 A stew of sewage and toxins that puts surfers and swimmers at risk of disease closed beaches north of the metal barrier dividing Tijuana from San Diego for more than 75 days last year. Contaminants flowing north from Mexico could worsen. A natural filter that keeps inland pollution from reaching the Pacific Ocean is the fragile Tijuana Estuary, which some environmentalists say is imperiled by federal plans to complete 3 1/2 miles of double border fencing beginning near the ocean. The fencing project will remove a 150-foot-wide strip of vegetation to make room for a patrol road between the walls. Vegetation prevents sediment from tumbling down the hills along the border into the 2,500-acre Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve. Sediment and the non-native seeds it brings with it choke the estuary's plant life. Adding earth to the estuary also can cause changes in elevation, and could turn parts of one of California's last salt marshes into dry land. The additional double fencing the U.S. House of Representatives wants to build along the international line would cause wilderness to disappear and irreparably harm environments with plants and animals unique to the border, a Star investigation found. Constructing fences â and the roads needed to build them â denudes huge swaths of land and affects migratory patterns of jaguars, wolves, bobcats and other animals. Improperly built fences can damage ecosystems with erosion, too. People also could be affected. Ocean pollution has hampered the surfing business and area tourism, says Ben McCue, coastal conservation program manager for Wildcoast, a nonprofit group of surfers and other ocean users based in Imperial Beach, Calif. that aims to preserve coastal ecosystems. Contaminants in the ocean put swimmers at risk for hepatitis, ear infections and gastrointestinal problems, he says. Preserving the border environment is a complex balance â and an important part of any talk of sealing the border because nearly one-third of the international line runs through federal lands, much of it protected parks, wildlife refuges and wilderness. In national lands on the border, illegal entrants leave piles of trash and human waste, and roads and trails are closed to the public because drug-smuggling traffic has created a safety hazard. Areas such as the 118,000-acre Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona â once a peaceful spot for bird-watchers â have turned into war zones where helicopters buzz in the sky, National Guard troops patrol and Department of Homeland Security buses wait for new loads of illegal entrants. Public lands threatened West of Buenos Aires, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has closed a third of its 331,000 acres because of public-safety concerns. Now closed is Quitobaquito Springs, a popular birding area that once drew visitors from around the world. The monument recently put up waist-high steel and cement vehicle barriers along its 30 miles of international border â an $18 million project the National Park Service listed as a priority after the 2002 shooting death of Organ Pipe Ranger Kris Eggle, 28, who was killed during a confrontation with Mexican drug smugglers. The Normandy vehicle barriers, named for barriers used in World War II, stop vehicles from crossing, but allow people and wildlife to pass. "You want a biological corridor," Organ Pipe Superintendent Kathy Billings says. "You really affect ecosystems when you put up huge walls." Still, foot traffic has led to a major problem in federally protected areas along the border: garbage. Illegal entrants have left behind hundreds of thousands of pounds of it, from clothes and old food cans to feces, graffiti and old cars. In five years, rangers at Organ Pipe have recovered 200 vehicles. "It increases the raven population, puts them out of balance with songbirds, attracts pack rats, and causes a visual impact," says Fred Patton, Organ Pipe's chief ranger. "In the future, they may have to use helicopters to remove the human waste." The 860,000-acre Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge west of Organ Pipe is so damaged that if it were considered for federal wilderness designation now, it likely would fail, Manager Roger Di Rosa says. About 40 miles of vehicle barriers are planned at the refuge, which will require cutting new roads to patrol them. But Di Rosa says it's worth it. "In 2003, the illegal activity just literally exploded," he says. "In the 1990s the U.S. Border Patrol had thought this area was so remote and had such difficult terrain that it would act as its own barrier. That was bad judgment." The refuge has 56 miles of international border and has a breeding program for the Sonoran pronghorn â a federally listed endangered species. About 75 exist in the wild in the United States â at Cabeza Prieta, Organ Pipe and the adjacent Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range. An additional 27 are in a large captive breeding area in Cabeza Prieta. "I support trying to have security here without a wall. But if that can't be done using all possible methods, ... well then, maybe the next step might be a wall," Di Rosa says. "If you put in a wall, yes, you are going to affect the ecology as far as the interchange of species. But you are also protecting a lot of habitat behind it and increasing border security at the same time." Wildlife corridors severed The rusted brown primary barrier along most of the 85 miles of fences on the border is made of welded mats known technically as "Vietnam-era steel corrugated landing mats" that range from 10 to 15 feet tall. The mats, which look more like a wall than a fence, are military surplus â they were used as portable airplane landing devices in the Vietnam War. Despite environmental concerns, the steel mats continue to go up. "It's cheap and there's a lot of it," Border Patrol spokesman Todd Fraser says. But the dense steel fence doesn't allow large wildlife to pass, potentially affecting breeding, and the mesh grates at its base often are blocked with debris, preventing even small animals from passing through. Rangers at Organ Pipe don't want the fence in their area because of wildlife concerns. Nor do officials with the Tohono O'odham Nation, who have 75 miles along the international border. Tribal officials also fear disrupting wildlife patterns. Sealing the border could mean the Sky Island region on the U.S. side no longer would have jaguars, says Sergio Avila, a wildlife biologist with the Tucson-based Sky Island Alliance who's part of a cross-border jaguar-conservation program. The "Sky Islands" are 40 mountain ranges in the United States and Mexico connected by the corridors they create for the movement of wild animals. "The jaguar, the mountain lion, the bobcat, the Mexican gray wolf, coatis and low-flying birds â roads and walls would make it impassable for all of them," Avila says. "There is only one Sky Island region and you cannot cut it in half." As he walks along the perimeter of the corrugated steel fence west of a port of entry in Nogales, Ariz., Avila points to a roadrunner that can't pass through the solid metal barrier, since the grate at the base is jammed with garbage. Roadrunners eat lizards and snakes, so not enough roadrunners on one side of the border could mean too many lizards and snakes. Another concern for wildlife are the high-powered lights that line busy areas such as San Diego and Calexico, Calif.; Nogales and Douglas, Ariz.; and El Paso. "Migrating birds are affected. Owls and bats cannot find their routes. The monarch butterfly, geese, plants, pollinators â they could all be affected," Avila says. "Ecological tourism will diminish. The San Pedro (National Riparian) Area alone brings in millions into the U.S. for birding." The Chihuahuan Desert, which stretches into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, is one of the most biologically rich and diverse desert ecoregions in the world, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and has species that exist nowhere else, including 1,500 known species of cacti. It's one of the last remaining habitats for ocelots and jagua-rundis and is home to more than 250 species of butterflies. Binational skies are shared by zone-tailed hawks, peregrine falcons and golden eagles. The Border Patrol is not only constructing fences, building roads and installing lights, but also burning vegetation and placing boat ramps along roughly 100 miles of land adjacent to the Rio Grande that's affecting the fragile desert, says Claudia Smith, director of the California's Rural Legal Assistance Foundation's Border Project. In San Diego, Wildcoast says plans for the new fence don't ensure water quality, but the government counters that the fence will more than make up for the loss of habitat that would occur with an unsecured border. Federal officials also say they're minimizing damage to plant and animal life. "Having personally seen traffic where thousands are coming across at any given time â at our height 500,000 a year were coming across â if you can stem foot traffic, you can protect much more environment than you would affect," says James Jacques, a spokesman in the Border Patrol's San Diego Sector. "In the fence project by the Pacific Ocean, you are protecting hundreds of acres of wetlands." Putting security first Environmentalists fighting border security are not taking the issue seriously enough, says Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit group that supports improved border security. "They don't seem to be worried about literally millions of people coming through and trampling flora and leaving tons of trash out there," he says. The defense of America ought to trump what in the great scheme of things are small environmental concerns, concurs Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors a wall as part of border-enforcement strategy. The U.S. population is swelling because of illegal immigration, he says, which will cause pollution and sprawl. Outgoing U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., says that when considering the border issue, the environment is a "fairly minor concern." "We've always said national security should come first, but we believe it doesn't have to be at the expense of the environment," counters Jenny Neeley, Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife. "If we don't start giving the environmental impacts consideration, we are going to lose our protected lands, and that would be a real tragedy." San Diego's Save Our Heritage Organisation has the fence dividing San Diego and Tijuana on its list of the city's 11 most endangered sites. The fence has created a giant, ugly scar on the Earth, says Bruce Coons, the group's director. Though federal officials say they've completed necessary environmental studies to proceed with the project and are taking care to ensure minimal disruption of wildlife habitat, Coons and others maintain the plan imperils the Tijuana Estuary. Further aggravating many people committed to protecting land and animals along the border was the passage of federal legislation in 2005 that allows the Department of Homeland Security to skirt all laws, even the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, in the name of national security. The legislation came under the Real ID Act, which was tacked onto an $82 billion spending bill for U.S. troops in Iraq. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff named the Real ID. Act last fall when he announced he'd be expediting the San Diego fence project. The nearby estuary is one of 22 wetlands in the United States the United Nations considers internationally significant. It includes five species of endangered birds and is more biologically significant and diverse than the redwood forest, says Clay Phillips, who manages the estuary's research reserve. Eroded sediment, primarily from development on Tijuana hillsides, already has destroyed 20 acres of the estuary, and environmental groups fear completing the San Diego double fencing could cause more severe damage. If Congress must build fences, it needs to make sure the projects are properly executed and researched, and not just short-term fixes, says Jim Peugh, conservation committee chairman of the San Diego Audubon Society, whose group filed an unsuccessful lawsuit over the San Diego double-fence project. The case was dismissed because of the Real ID Act. Named in the suit was a plan to fill a canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch with dirt from lopping off two nearby mesas, and building a patrol road on the berm. "In Smuggler's Gulch, that big dirt berm they are building to support the fences and 150- foot wide roadway across the canyon is likely to erode away, eventually wiping out a significant portion of the Tijuana Estuary," Peugh says. "The sad thing is, we can attempt to seal the border now, and some year not long from now we may not need border protection at all. But by then, it will be too late." Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at 573-4134 or at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ======================================== Wirt Atmar
