The Border Wall's impact on the environment
The more distant the national discourse takes place from the frontier, the more disconnected it is from the truth of borderland society, can people live and work along the southern boundaries of the U.S. This long-standing view has once again been reinforced by the controversy in Washington over the proposal of President Donald Trump for $5.7 billion to create a border wall. This is because people hold out to create a wall. However, history is full of stories of barriers around the world, which hardly dissuade determined citizens from entering. The wisdom of building a mall across the border of the U.S. and Mexico at a time when the number of arrests of illegal boundary crossers has been at a low 45 years is a problem for the Delta. Janet Napolitano was a governor of Arizona and President Barack Obama's secretary of home security.
The limits of the Gulf of Mexico in Texas reach 1,954 miles to California's Pacific Ocean, covering one of the nation's most expansive ecosystems. It comprises six distinct eco-regions, including both freshwater and salt from desert shrub to forested forests to wetland marshlands. The construction of the boundary wall would separate the geographical distribution of 1,506 native and 62 critically endangered animals and plants. In the paper published in Bioscience last July, a team of environmental experts, including Edward O. Wilson, the renowned biologist, and naturalist, argued that a boundary wall threatens those ecosystems. A wall increases the deterioration of the land. This will change the movements of the natural waters and wildfires by attracting their escape and contributing to the threats of both humans and wildlife.
Despite 700 miles of fence under George W. Bush's presidency, flood hazards occurred in Arizona. During the rainy season, barriers became an obstacle. A 5-mile segment of a 15-footer high wire mesh barrier caught the debris, which washed into a natural wash during a summer storm lasting 90 minutes, at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Southwest Arizona in 2008, creating two-to-seven-footer pools of water. The construction of the boundary wall separated the geographical distribution of 1,506 native and 62 critically endangered animals and plants. In the paper published in Bioscience last July, a team of environmental experts, including Edward O. Wilson, the renowned biologist, and naturalist, argued that a boundary wall threatens those ecosystems. A wall increases the deterioration of the land. This will change the movements of the natural waters and wildfires by attracting their escape and contributing to the threats of both humans and wildlife.
The Bioscience paper concluded that a third of 346 indigenous species could be isolated by the frontier wall from 50 percent or more of their habitat south of the border. This increases the probability of their survival by reducing, isolating, and restricting their ability to roam for food, water, and co-workers. Fencing can trap animals from explosions, flooding, or waves of heat. Also, the pygmy owl is in trouble when it is less than 5 feet off the floor while it is flying. Border fencing disrupts seasonal migration that affects the access of Peninsular bighorn sheep from California to Mexico to water and birthplaces. The failure to cross the frontier has broken populations of sound horns and limited the possibility for the reestablishment in the United States of colonies of Mexican gray wolves and jaguars and ocelots. Once on the Rio Grande, Jaguars roamed, then practically vanished from Texas. Migration caps, on the other hand, affect plants. Seeds of mesquite trees germinate best after crossing the digestive systems of the javelin and coyotes, according to a study by Defenders of Nature.
The Rio Grande meandering, the official US-Mexico boundary, was long considered a geographical impediment for constructing the frontier clasp. The canal moves from time to time and in the spring rains. Building a wall north of the river will potentially cede to Mexico the ownership of the Mexican territories, dividing U.S. citizens' properties and residences. That is a modern way of thinking. Congress funded 1,6 billion dollars last spring, mostly in Texas, to construct more walls. Home defense proposals call for the building in Hildalgo County, often about a thousand miles from the borders of 25 miles of wall at the flood control lever. Another 8 miles in the adjacent Starr County was expected.
Proposals will include the wall in seven Texas wildlife conservation areas, including the National Wildlife Refuge of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and National Big Bend Park which are identifiable among the national parks as such a remote location as a night sky location. In Mission, Texas, the National Butterfly Center, which is home to over 200 species of butterflies along the banks of Rio Grande, recorded a split of 100 acres between the Wall and approximately 70% on the Mexican side. Plans also propose a nature preserve and state park to be bisected, putting Mexico's more of the land. Having raged against this, Homeland Security has shelved proposals to build the wall across the Santa Ana National Sanctuary in Alamo, Texas, where over 400 species of birds, twigs, and endangered sparrows nest.
Building a boundary wall would not have to comply with more than 30 of the most stringent and powerful federal conservation regulations, such as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. The explanation is the True ID Act passed in 2005 by Congress in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11th. It authorizes Home Protection to dispense with any rules in the name of national security. The True ID Act has been challenged by several cases dating back to 2006. To date, no court challenges have survived that would bring before the Supreme Court the substantive matter relating to the executive branch. These are also big problems.
In conclusion, the border wall did more harm than good. It affected the lives of the people living near the construction, and it also put the immigrants in conditions that simply were not fair. Now, the construction of the wall has been put to a halt, helping immigrants stay safe. Remember, do not be fooled as there are still 9,000 immigrants being per day and ICE still holds the harmful power it always did.
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Image Sources:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/dhs-chief-marks-first-section-trump-s-border-wall-it-n924941
https://www.curbed.com/2021/01/president-biden-stopped-trumps-border-wall.html
https://abc7news.com/border-wall-mexico-trump-400-miles-of/7449753/