What is the impact of the border fence on Texas animals?

Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine
August 2011
by Rob McCorkle


On a mild December day in the subtropical Rio Grande Valley, I’m following wildlife biologist Steve Benn along U.S. Highway 281 southeast of Weslaco toward the Hidalgo-Cameron County line. Winter crops like cabbage and onions poke from fecund Rio Grande delta soil along the narrow blacktop that heads south toward the river. An ink-black indigo snake — one of the Valley’s rare species — slithers across the road.

Pulling up behind Benn’s Texas Parks and Wildlife Department truck just north of the levee next to a large gap in the border wall, which rises 18 feet from the dirt, I spot two bobcats about 30 yards away on a bulldozed road that parallels the wall. Cut off to the south by the concrete and steel wall, the cats cast a furtive glance my way before wheeling and dashing north into the thin line of brush adjacent to the bare sugar cane fields just beyond. Had we not been parked next to the gap in this segment of the border wall on TPWD property, where federal government contractors will eventually install a gate, the cats might have slipped through and headed south toward the Rio Grande.

Though I’d read about the fence and seen photos, seeing the border wall with my own eyes bordered on the surreal. Broken segments of the 18-foot-tall, picket-like steel fencing zigzag across the tabletop-flat South Texas landscape, often beginning and ending in the middle of a field, visible at times from the highway, while at other times hidden beyond a distant tree line. While news coverage in the past few years has focused on the wall’s human-related purpose and impacts, little has been communicated about what effects the border fence might have on wildlife, land management practices and ecotourism in one of the state’s most impoverished regions.

* * *

The imposing fence inside the Anacua Unit of the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area represents but one small part of Texas’ 110 miles of the 670 miles of congressionally mandated Southwest border fence hopscotching across the almost 2,000 miles of border from San Diego to Brownsville to deter drug smuggling and illegal crossings from Mexico into the United States.

In the lower Rio Grande Valley, all but a few of the 22 segments of the called-for 70 miles of pedestrian fencing (as opposed to vehicle fencing) already have been built under the direction of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Most of the shorter segments measure about a mile in length and were erected adjacent to international bridges or at traditionally heavily trafficked border crossings.

The half-mile-long Anacua Unit segment sits in the middle of 2.52 acres purchased by the federal government under condemnation proceedings initiated by the Department of Homeland Security under authority of the Secure Fence Act. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission opposed the land seizure, expressing concern that it would negatively affect wildlife habitat conservation efforts begun some 40 years ago in one of North America’s most important ecological regions, where nature tourism produces a $125 million-a-year economic impact. But federal authorities got the property and installed bollard-type fencing on a 60-foot-wide strip of land in the heart of the unit.

“When finished, and the gate’s put in, bobcats and many other terrestrial wildlife won’t be able to get through this fence here,” explains Benn, project leader for the 3,300-acre Las Palomas WMA, originally purchased by TPWD for white-winged dove nesting habitat with federal excise taxes on hunting equipment and white-winged dove stamp sales. The Anacua Unit is one of 18 units that make up the WMA, and three of them are adversely affected by the wall. “There’s only a 4-inch gap between the steel bars, and with the bars set into a 9-foot-deep concrete trench, animals won’t be able to burrow under it.”

The wildlife biologist worries that the border fence will only compound the Valley’s ongoing habitat fragmentation. He says the wall complicates the area’s wildlife management efforts and threatens indigenous rare species such as the ocelot, Texas tortoise, indigo snake and Texas horned lizard. Benn wonders, too, where animals trapped north of the wall, away from the river, will find drinking water.

Ironically, the wall has gone up in an area where TPWD, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and an army of conservation organizations have spent more than $150 million and several decades acquiring acreage and restoring native habitat in the Valley, where 95 percent of the Tamaulipan thornscrub and riparian woodlands has been eradicated. The result is a sprawling checkerboard of almost 200,000 acres under conservation protection in the Rio Grande delta, a government-protected wildlife corridor that facilitates animal migration and supports plant and animal diversity.

Conservationists fear the border wall will reverse much of that progress and hasten the demise of species such as the endangered ocelot, whose breeding U.S. population — confined to South Texas ranchland and the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge — has dropped below 100.

* * *

In the field of wildlife biology, empirical evidence rules. But trying to discern just what kind of impact the still-unfinished border wall is having on wildlife proves to be a less-than-exact science. USFWS and TPWD biologists in 2008 struggled to establish baseline data before fence installation.

Biologists trapped and collared bobcats in several areas, including the Anacua tract, so they could track their movements as the wall went up. At TPWD’s Champion Unit in Hidalgo County, managed by the USFWS, biologists did a series of three-minute bird counts before fence construction began to see how bird populations might be affected by any habitat destruction, as well as the noise associated with building the fence and future U.S. Border Patrol operations. Although birds can fly over any barrier, conservationists note that destruction of riparian habitat for wall construction means many bird species would have less habitat in which to survive.

Much of the Valley’s wildlife exists in the USFWS South Texas Refuge Complex. The Santa Ana, Laguna Atascosa and Lower Rio Grande Valley national wildlife refuges include 100 tracts totaling 180,000 acres. Biologists and volunteers sampled wildlife and bird populations along wall segments being built inside the complex.

USFWS wildlife biologist Mitch Sternberg coordinates biological programs for the refuge complex. He oversaw pre- and post-construction wildlife track surveys conducted along roads at the base of four sections of the fence in Cameron County south and east of Brownsville in the Sabal Palm Audubon Sanctuary, the Southmost Preserve and Boscaje de la Palma.

Biologists found numerous animal tracks from coyotes, lizards, snakes and raccoons skirting the end of the fence segments, which typically abut roads used to access the river levee. In addition, biologists found that the wildlife crossings (8-by-11-inch “cat holes”) were being frequented primarily by raccoons. While the more than 300 passages incorporated into the various Valley fence segments at the request of USFWS can accommodate smaller terrestrial creatures, they are too small to allow passage of larger animals, such as coyotes, bobcats or tortoises.

In the summer of 2009, Sternberg conducted bobcat tracking surveys at several future fence construction sites. He set up infrared cameras near several wildlife corridors along natural drainages. Sternberg followed the movements of a bobcat mating pair and their kitten as construction got under way. When an adult female came into their territory, the bobcat pair killed her.

“In December, I saw both the male and female dead by Highway 281,” Stern recalls. “Their territory had been squeezed down to 400 square yards of agricultural fields and brush near the wall and highway. They were likely searching for more territory. There are 600 acres of brush south of the wall, but it was a mile to the gate opening and they didn’t find it.”

In Arizona, the border fence has been in place long enough for conservation scientists and others to track some of the consequences caused by fragmented habitat for specific wildlife populations. Aaron Flesch, senior research specialist with the University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment, documented some of the effects of habitat connectivity issues on desert bighorn sheep and ferruginous pygmy owls in an article published in Conservation Biology.

Of the diminutive owls that tend to fly only a few feet off the ground, Flesch wrote: “They tend to avoid large vegetation openings. And when they encounter large vegetation openings greater than 200 meters, they tend to turn around.” He concluded that large vegetation gaps coupled with tall fences “could limit trans-boundary movements” of the owls.

Flesch’s team also concluded that the “disruption of trans-boundary movement corridors by impermeable fencing would isolate some populations [of female bighorn sheep] on the Arizona side,” likely having a negative effect on the overall population living in the resulting fragmented Arizona habitat.

Flesch and his team suggested additional funding was needed to support research among governmental agencies, universities and other organizations to find the best ways to balance border security and the needs of wildlife species.

To that end, a team of University of Arizona researchers working with the U.S. Geological Survey in 2010 developed a protocol for monitoring the border wall’s potential effects on wildlife to help identify locations that need to have mitigation actions. It has been submitted to the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Department of Homeland Security and is still under review.

“What we’ve got now is anecdotal information and studies that look at one species or one section, but we really need a comprehensive analysis of the impacts over a large stretch of the area,” says Laura Lopez-Hoffman, assistant professor of the university’s School of Natural Resources.

Nancy Brown, public outreach specialist for the South Texas Refuge Complex, estimates the border wall has affected 60 to 75 percent of the complex’s land. Three-quarters of the federally owned acreage fronts the Rio Grande, which snakes for 275 miles through the Valley. In her Santa Ana NWR office is a map of the green swath of the river corridor marked with red squiggles that look like tiny worms, denoting the proposed segments of the wall to be built between Brownsville and Lake Falcon.

In Hidalgo County, contractors built roughly 20 miles of concrete wall — not along the river, but atop the meandering earthen levees that protect the southern part of the county from floodwaters. Here, no wildlife passages exist at the wall’s base.

The opposite end of the county is home to the Valley Nature Center. Overseeing the center’s operations in the heart of Weslaco is Martin Hagne, who moved to the Rio Grande Valley in 1979 and serves on the board of the Friends of Santa Ana NWR.

While the wall’s present impact on the Valley ecology and wildlife is just now becoming known, at least anecdotally, Hagne frets over the long-term effects of closing off wildlife corridors in so many different places, where the river sometimes takes wicked twists and turns.

Although the Valley Nature Center is far enough inland not to be impacted, the wall has affected operations at two of Cameron County’s most significant nature preserves bordering the Rio Grande.

Uncertainties surrounding the wall’s construction and access issues forced Audubon in May 2009 to close its Sabal Palm sanctuary, home to the nation’s last substantial stand of the subtropical sabal palm. The 527-acre nature preserve did reopen in January 2011 when a private group, the Gorgas Science Foundation of Brownsville, stepped forward to help fund and run the refuge.

A few miles downriver lies the 1,034-acre Southmost Preserve, another major native sabal palm sanctuary as well as a native plant nursery, organic citrus operation and critical native wildlife habitat for rare snakes, cats and other critters. The Nature Conservancy has filed suit contesting U.S. condemnation and seizure of eight acres that today hosts a 6,000-foot-long, 60-foot-wide strip of land bisected by the border fence. Its location cuts off the northernmost part of the preserve, isolating 900 acres between the wall and Rio Grande in what critics call a “no man’s land.” Preserve operators find themselves grappling with myriad land management challenges.

“My concern now is how do we manage the property, operate the nursery where we’re growing 80,000 seedlings under contract with the USFWS and keep the wetlands and resacas pumped full of water,” says John Herron, the Nature Conservancy’s director of conservation.

Herron says many people don’t realize that the fence doesn’t follow the river, that huge gaps exist between fence sections and that hundreds of acres end up stranded between the wall and river.

“The fence is exempted from environmental laws, so there hasn’t been any assessment of the environmental impact,” Herron says. “Who should pay for that? The USFWS hasn’t been given any money for that, nor have we. Here we are three years into it and there are lots of areas with no clarity.”

Fifth-generation South Texan Max Pons, who manages the preserve and lives on the property, hopes the wall’s presence doesn’t threaten the preserve’s wildlife that thrives amid the native Tamaulipan thornscrub and ancient stands of Sabal mexicana. The native palms once forested much of the Rio Grande Valley, but are now found only in deep South Texas and northern Mexico. Each palm, which can grow up to 40 feet tall, creates a micro-habitat of its own.

“You can have a population of southern yellow bats living under its leaves,” Pons explains, “and turkeys and other birds nesting and roosting. Invertebrates collect in leaf litter at the base, which attracts lizards and snakes such as the endangered indigo. Wood rats live in the trees and hop from one tree to the other.”

Pons credits the federal government, however, with working with him and other conservation agencies to try to mitigate some of the wall’s impact on wildlife. On a drive along a recently installed wall segment, he gets out to show me a hard-to-spot, notebook-paper-size opening that has been cut out at the bottom of the steel fencing to allow snakes and other small critters to pass through. In another concession to conservation organizations, he says federal contractors dug up several hundred sabal palms in the fence right-of-way for replanting at Southmost Preserve, Sabal Palm Audubon Sanctuary and Bosque de la Palma NWR.

Some representatives of the Valley’s lucrative nature tourism industry, a business fueled by world-class birding that draws enthusiasts hoping to add such local specialty birds as the green jay and chachalaca to their life lists, worry about the wall’s impact on local economies.

Nancy Millar, director of the McAllen Convention and Visitors Bureau, says news of the border wall has already resulted in one British birding company canceling future tours to the area. And, she says she gets plenty of questions about the impact of the fence when she attends travel shows in the U.S. and abroad.

For Keith Hackland, president of the Friends of the Wildlife Corridor and owner of the Alamo Inn and Outdoor Store in Alamo, concerns remain about what impact the border wall will have on prime birding spots in riparian forests farther upriver.

“The greatest fear I have is for the part of the wall being built from Rio Grande City to Falcon Dam in Starr County,” Hackland says, “because the plan is to place it along the river. Clearing the narrow strip of riparian forest on the banks would be an ecological disaster, eliminating the red-billed pigeon, Audubon’s oriole, Muscovy duck and all of the rare nesting birds.”

He contends that such habitat destruction in such an ecologically rich region blessed with more than 500 bird and 300 butterfly species will have a huge impact on wildlife,
conservation efforts and the economy.

“If nature tourists lose confidence in this area and can’t access the river forest,” Hackland says during my visit to his inn, “I’ll be looking for new use for this building. They are the ones who pay the bills and help make this enterprise work.”

http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2011/aug/ed_3_borderwall/

An openness to border fence: Divider boundless as visual forum for political expression

San Diego Union-Tribune
November 30, 2009
by Leslie Berestein

In Cold War-era Berlin, artists and others who decried the wall dividing the city into east and west used its concrete expanse as a broad canvas for political and personal expression, over the years turning its gray surface into multihued graffiti art.

And in Tijuana today, those who protest U.S. immigration policies have the border fence.

In the nearly two decades since fencing began to appear on the U.S.-Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana, the fence has become its own political canvas of sorts, with stretches of it serving as a backdrop for installations that have included thousands of wooden crosses, painted coffins, paintings of skulls and of doors that go nowhere, save for the desert.

The paintings and installations, the most recent a collection of 5,100 wooden crosses hung from the fence at Playas de Tijuana last month, are memorials to those who have died in attempts to traverse the border illegally, most of them through rough terrain to the east.

The fence also has acted as a billboard for political candidates, as a structure on which to affix screened images for a city art exhibit a few years ago, as a place for taggers’ graffiti and for the quieter musings of would-be migrants who have scratched their names and where they came from onto the rusty metal.

Unlike on the Berlin Wall, where much of the art was spontaneous and anonymous, most of the protest art on the border fence has been planned and orchestrated by border activists and local artists. To the east in Nogales, Ariz., an artists’ collective has been responsible for many of the pieces there, including metal sculptures and murals affixed to the fence. Still, those who have studied the phenomenon of political boundaries and art say there are universal similarities in what prompts the expression.

“Borders tend not to be joyous places,” said Justinian Jampol, a historian and museum director in Los Angeles who has studied the Berlin Wall and the art it inspired. “Borders tend to be where people are separated. They tend to be points of contention. Artists are naturally drawn to spaces that have an aura around them, a tension, that is already endowed with meaning.”

For an event this month celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Jampol’s Wende Museum, which is dedicated to Cold War history and culture, set up an 80-foot “wall” across a major Los Angeles boulevard and invited artists and taggers to paint it. He said he was struck by how often the U.S.-Mexico border came up as a theme.

Other border barriers have prompted similar expression, said Guillermo Alonso Meneses, a cultural anthropologist with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Baja California. This includes the new West Bank barrier in Israel, which has been marked in protest. Even the fences separating the Spanish outposts of Melilla and Ceuta from the rest of Morocco have been used by African migrants as a place to leave messages, Meneses said.

With access restricted to much of the north side, the art on the border fence between Tijuana and San Diego is unique to the south side. Many of the installations along the aging metal barrier that abuts Tijuana — referred to by U.S. authorities as the primary fence — have been temporary, and some of the displays that remain are weathered. Driving west along the fence from the border crossing at Otay Mesa past the city’s airport, one sees what appears to be an interminable stretch of white crosses with the names of the dead written in black. On occasion, a cross will have dried flowers tucked around it.

The crosses were attached to the fence in the late 1990s, said Claudia Smith of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a longtime migrant-rights activist who began collaborating with local artists to protest Operation Gatekeeper, a mid-1990s federal initiative to beef up border security.

At the time, additional fencing and other measures pushed human smuggling traffic toward East County mountains and the Imperial Valley desert, and border-crossing fatalities rose. The idea, Smith said, was to draw attention to the deaths.

“At the beginning, we were issuing news releases, but we realized there was no other way of conveying the magnitude of this tragedy,” said Smith, who continues to be involved in planning the installations with artists. “By doing something visual, and also something that was very prominently displayed, people would have to go by them as they went about their daily lives.”

Installations have included roughly 1,000 pairs of shoes with toe tags attached hung from the fence and a series of painted coffins, the latter the work of Tijuana artist Alberto Caro that has since been removed. A series of paintings by San Diego artist Michael Schnorr and members of the Border Art Workshop depicted a large fleshy wound with the words “La frontera es Una llaga abierta” — Spanish for the “the border is an open wound.” Some of the paintings still survive across from the airport.

Artist Susan Yamagata painted a skull motif on giant papier mâche boots and shoes that were displayed along the airport stretch, one shoe emblazoned with the words “¿Cuantos mas?” — Spanish for “How many more?”

“I wanted to be able to do something,” said Yamagata, who has worked on fence art projects with Smith. “I am not a wealthy person, but I can give time and labor. I felt it was a worthy cause.”

Just west of the airport, before the main road turns south and the pavement along the fence ends, a red obelisk with crosses stands in a small traffic circle, the city-sanctioned work of Tijuana artist Roberto Rosique. A closer look at the fence reveals words scratched in the metal, including a man’s name next to the word “Morelos,” a state in central-southern Mexico.

Along the fence, a close observer will find musings that Alonso said range from insults against U.S. border authorities to “quasi-poetic, saying, ‘I dream of the United States,’ or ‘My love awaits me in Los Angeles.’ You have to go walking the fence to find them.”

By the time the main road rejoins the fence toward Playas de Tijuana, the work of taggers can be seen on the fence. The protest art becomes visible again in Playas, where the fence extends into the ocean.

Over the years, there have been a series of installations on the south side of the fence, including a large painting of a skeleton drinking the last drop of water from a water jug and a traditional Mexican altar for the dead. Three paintings of “doors” — the only open one leading into a depiction of the desert — from a few years ago are still in place, the work of Yamagata and San Diego artist Todd Stands.

Most prominent is another cross-themed work, this one a massive cluster. Yamagata and Schnorr collaborated on it with Smith and with the Coalición Pro Defensa del Migrante, a Tijuana-based migrant aid organization. Hung from the fence near the beach are 5,100 white crosses, symbolizing the estimated number of border-crossing deaths in the past 15 years, strung together and draped from the top.

The display took six months to put together, said Esmeralda Siu, director of the migrant coalition. Volunteers, including the residents of a Tijuana migrant shelter, did much of the work of constructing and stringing the crosses together. They were installed Oct. 30, in time for Mexico’s traditional Day of the Dead holiday Nov. 2.

Swaying gently in the breeze, the crosses had a powerful effect on Silvia Urieta, 41, in Tijuana visiting relatives for the week.

“Imagine, how many people,” said Urieta, who lives in Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, on the coast of Guerrero state. “I took photos so that my paisanos could see it.”

The installation was a sobering sight for the family as they posed for photos, otherwise merrily, by the 1851 marble monument marking the border.

“Those who come from the south, they get the wrong idea,” said Urieta’s brother-in-law Adrian Pineda, 35, a native of Tijuana. “They think it’s easy. But here is how easy it is. For many, the dream they have ends in a cross.”

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/nov/30/an-openness-to-border-fence/

A Barren Promise at the Border

Voice of San Diego
October 21, 2009
by Rob Davis

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 Had anyone else built this hillside near the U.S.-Mexico border, it would look nothing like it does. The barren hill would be alive with native plants, the earth would be solidly rooted and not a threat to tumble down into the Tijuana Estuary, a lush, 2,500-acre salt marsh that starts 600 feet away.

But along the newly constructed border fence near the Pacific Ocean in Border Field State Park, inch-thick tan clumps of seeds and mulch still blanket the ground. They haven't been watered, so no plants have grown.

Were it anyone else's project, state regulators would've required irrigation to ensure that plants grew. But the federal government is responsible for the $59 million effort to complete and reinforce 3.5 miles of border fence separating San Diego and Tijuana. The Department of Homeland Security exempted itself from eight federal laws and any related state laws that would have regulated the project's environmental impacts.

Because the project is exempt from the federal Clean Water Act, state water regulators have no jurisdiction.Homeland Security officials sought the waiver power in 2005 to accelerate fence construction in San Diego and across the Southwest, saying that national security needs trumped environmental concerns. That power has accelerated construction from San Diego to Brownsville, as the agency has waived laws across 550 miles of the border. To date, 633 miles of fence have been built at a cost of $2.4 billion.

The department made the same promise each time it waived laws like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act: Though we're now exempt from federal and state environmental regulation, we're still committed to the environment.

But as construction continues across the Southwest, the project's impacts in Border Field State Park and in another federal reserve further east raise questions about the sincerity of the government's commitment.Clay Phillips, the California State Parks superintendent who oversees Border Field and the estuary, said that promise hasn't been fulfilled there. Mitigation of the fence's environmental impacts has "failed miserably," Phillips said.

Phillips worries that winter rains will wash soil off the hills into the nearby estuary he oversees, which is home to several sensitive species and already filling with sediment swept in from Tijuana. Sediment raises the level of the ground, stopping the twice-daily tidal flushing that keeps the wetlands wet.

Army Corps of Engineers contractors completed the fence separating San Diego and Tijuana in July.

They filled in the notorious cross-border canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch, added a second layer of steel fencing and built a road for Border Patrol vehicles running parallel to the fence. The gulch, once a deep canyon, is now filled with an earthen berm more than 100 feet tall.

Though native plant seeds were sprayed across the berm and other newly created hillsides in Border Field State Park, Phillips said the federal government never irrigated them. Only a handful of plants grew. Other hills have none.

"They sprayed it (with seed) and hoped for the best," Phillips said. "It was a waste. A token gesture."

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Jenny Burke, said the project was built to Caltrans' erosion standards. The agency will "monitor the situation and is considering other actions as required."

John Robertus, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, the local water pollution police, said the project doesn't have all the safeguards his agency would've required. He said if the board had jurisdiction, it would've required temporary irrigation to ensure plants grew. Robertus said he, too, is concerned about the project's potential impacts on the estuary.

Fence construction has left a mark on other areas in San Diego County greater than what would've been allowed without the waiver. Further east in the federally protected Otay Mountain Wilderness, a road built along a new four-mile section of fence also left barren hills, said Joyce Schlachter, a wildlife biologist with the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the area.

"When we get any rain, it's going to be an erosion nightmare," Schlachter said. Seeds have been sprayed there, too, but not watered, she said. No plants have grown.

The impacts on Otay Mountain stretch beyond possible erosion. Phalanxes of dump trucks going to work on the fence have rumbled up and down a dirt road, spreading clouds of dust as far as 30 feet away, blanketing Tecate cypress, a rare tree found only on three peaks in San Diego County. (Its range extends into Mexico.) The tree, a bushy evergreen, provides food for the Thorne's hairstreak butterfly, a rare thumbnail-sized insect that feeds only on the cypress and that has been suffering from too-frequent fires on the mountain.

Construction crews cut down more than 100 cypress that survived a massive 2003 wildfire to widen an existing road for construction vehicles, Schlachter said.If laws hadn't been waived, the Bureau would have required construction crews to minimize their impact on the trees, she said.

Homeland Security officials consulted with the Bureau, Schlachter said, then didn't follow all of its advice."When it came right down to it, they did what they wanted to do," Schlachter said. "And they knew they couldn't be stopped. We did not have control over it."

Kathy Williams, a San Diego State biology professor studying the butterfly, said the dust poses "potentially a really serious problem" for the Thorne's hairstreak and the cypress.Williams has reared a small number of Thorne's caterpillars on both dusty and clean leaves in her laboratory.

Results from the on-going experiment so far indicate that more caterpillars survived on clean leaves, she said.Before construction began last year, Williams said the roadside habitat looked much healthier. She saw more butterflies last year than she did this year, though she noted that population sizes vary annually.

"Now it's obviously degraded habitat," she said, noting that rainfall may help clean the leaves. "The appearance of the quality of the site is strikingly different."

Burke, the Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, said the agency consulted with U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials about the Otay project and routinely wets the road to keep dust down. She said Customs and Border Protection will monitor the dust and maintain the roads "to their construction standard," and could periodically apply "dust-control agents," which include sap.

Those efforts haven't always worked well. Sap was sprayed on trees beyond the road's edge, Schlachter said. Dust stuck on top of the sap, she said, making the trees' survival questionable. "They're creating more risk to the plants," she said. "That's an issue."

On at least one occasion, crews didn't water the road -- even though they had the necessary equipment on hand. One morning in June, a water truck escorted dump trucks to the work site but didn't spray any water. As the trucks wound through the wilderness past Tecate cypress, choking clouds of dust followed.

U.S. Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, whose district includes Border Field State Park, said in a statement that she wants more done immediately to address the fence's environmental impacts."Many people, including myself, expressed strong concerns about the border fence and the implications of exempting the construction of the fence from environmental laws," Davis said.

"Unfortunately, those concerns are becoming a reality. I hope the Department of Homeland Security will continue to work with Congress and local officials in finding an immediate solution and work toward a permanent one."

A representative of an environmental group that opposed the fence because of concerns about erosion said its construction reinforced the reasons for his opposition. Jim Peugh, conservation chairman of the San Diego Audubon Society, said he hopes the fence serves as an example of why environmental laws should never be waived.

"The idea of building something without seeing how you're going to maintain it -- it's just going to fail," Peugh said. "That's an insane thing to do. And this project proves that beyond a doubt."

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/10/22/environment/835borderfence102109.txt

If a Tree Falls in the Valley: The Sabal Palm and the Border Fence

The Nature Conservancy
June 22, 2009
by Clay Carrington

If a rare tree is leveled to make room for the border fence, will anyone care?

The moment the Secure Fence Act (H.R. 6061) was approved in 2006, the most important question associated with the construction of the United States-Mexico border fence ceased to be “why?” and became “where?” The fence — actually a series of intermittent freestanding barriers — is nearly complete, with most of the California, Arizona and New Mexico stages finished.

In West Texas, construction is well underway from the state line east to Fort Hancock, while on the opposite end of the state, building has begun on sections in the Rio Grande Valley. There, amid the resacas and thornscrub of South Texas, the finished fence will eventually trace the slow curves of the Rio Grande River.

More or less.

The border fence doesn’t strictly adhere to the national border — the Rio Grande. In reality, its path veers erratically inland — a straight line that disregards the natural curves and oxbows of an ageless river — creating huge swaths of the United States trapped in a “no man’s land” south of the fence and north of the border. The Nature Conservancy’s Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve stands to be bisected by the fence, leaving nearly three-quarters of the preserve in this no man’s land.

The merits of Southmost Preserve are innumerable:

• Spanning 1,034 acres at the very tip of Texas, the preserve is home to a wealth of threatened and endangered species, including rare birds, frogs and tortoises.
• The land lies under the Central Flyway, one of four principal migratory bird routes in North America, and the preserve’s thick Tamaulipan thornscrub represents a prime wildlife corridor for free-roaming ocelots and jaguarundi.

For years Southmost Preserve has been a haven for scientists and birders enticed by land where, in a single day, dozens of rare animal species can be spotted.

But the real prize at Southmost — the bedrock of its unique habitat and the species that helped earn the preserve the moniker “Jewel of the Rio Grande” — is the rare sabal palm. Once found across much of the lower Gulf Coast, sabal palm forests have all but vanished under the plow. While some scattered trees can be found on private lands in the region, the significant remaining stands of these towering trees are located at Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve, the Sabal Palm Audubon Center and the Lower Rio Grand Valley National Wildlife Refuge. All three of those conservation areas lie in the path of the border fence.

In order to save sabal palms that would otherwise be leveled by construction of the fence, the Conservancy is partnering with the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and Audubon Texas in coordination with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to transplant palms to safe ground, one tree at a time.

The trees, which grow as tall as 65 feet and are up to 100 years old, are being uprooted and hauled to a number of spots, most within a mile of their original location, where they are then carefully replanted.

It’s a massive undertaking and a race against the clock. Each of the approximately 300 trees must be thoroughly trimmed and the root balls need to be unearthed intact to ensure survival. The project, which is already underway, is expected to last through the summer.

The security of our borders is of paramount importance. Since the creation of Southmost Preserve, the Conservancy has worked closely with the U.S. Border Patrol to allow ample access to the property.

Unfortunately, in an attempt to seize the preserve — or at least the narrow strip of land on which the fence would sit — the Department of Homeland Security has opted for litigation over collaboration. Southmost Preserve is now the subject of a condemnation lawsuit that, if successful, would allow construction of the fence and would require the government to pay for only the land on which the barrier sits, regardless of how much property winds up inaccessible, uninhabitable and outside the reach of conservation management.

Despite this harsh reality, the Conservancy, Texas Audubon and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service remain resolute, working throughout the intense heat of the South Texas summer to give hundreds of iconic, historic trees the best chance to survive for future generations of Texans.

And hopefully, if the project is a success, this scramble to protect the last remnants of a once-majestic forests will someday be viewed as the best possible conservation outcome salvaged from a very bad idea.

http://blog.nature.org/2009/06/border-fence-southmost-preserve-sabal-palm-nature-conservancy/

Wildlife versus the wall

Denver Post
March 26, 2009
by Claire Martin

There's just a set of raccoon tracks on the dusty road in one of Wendy Shattil's new wildlife photographs. You can't see the raccoon.

But you can understand its determination as the tracks travel steadily alongside one stretch of the giant, and controversial, border wall that is going up along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Shattil, a Denver photographer renowned for her wildlife images, followed the little footprints for more than half a mile as they doggedly followed the access road next to the wall in Hidalgo County, Texas. A river courses on the other side of the wall, sometimes close enough to hear.

"It's hard to tell what's in the mind of a raccoon, but it could have been looking for the end of the barrier because it wanted to (cross over)," Shattil said.

"That could explain why it walked so far next to the wall. The tracks didn't stray from the road the entire distance."

Shattil, a slim woman with a piercing gaze and a mane of dark hair, recently spent three weeks on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands along with 12 other International League of Conservation Photographers. Each photographer documented a section of the wall between San Diego, Calif., and Brownsville, Texas.

Her trip to the borderlands produced a portfolio that illustrates how the formidable wall, designed to deter illegal border crossings, is also blocking ancient wildlife migration paths and habitat on more than 100,000 acres of riverfront public land and wildlife reserves.

The public is divided on merits of the wall, to say the least. Proponents argue it is a necessary step toward stopping lawbreakers and preserving security. Others fear it will take a terrible toll on the natural environment.

To hasten the wall's construction, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff waived scores of federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

Borderland environmentalists joke, sort of, that once the wall is built, the only ocelot likely to thrive in Texas is the Ocelot Grove subdivision, a housing development. The wall will separate a Mexican ocelot population from a tiny and increasingly inbred Texas ocelot community that wildlife preservationists say desperately needs new blood to survive.

Bulldozed access roads flank both sides of the steadily growing 15-foot wall, ravaging U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuge tracts, a state park, several birding centers and a butterfly preserve. Both the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve and the Sabal Palm Audubon sanctuary are in the wall's path.

"People outside the borderlands don't have a clue about what's up with the wall," Shattil said.

"A lot of animals will starve or dehydrate unless they can find alternatives to what they've historically used."

Though birds can fly over the wall, the construction is destroying habitat hard- won over the past two decades by Ducks Unlimited, state and federal wildlife officials, and other conservation groups.

The refuges lured birds, and then a growing number of bird-watching tourists, who flocked to the borderlands to add to their life lists. Texas is the only state with its own Peterson's Field Guide, the birders' handbook.

Green jays, kiskadees, pauraques, roseate spoonbills, kingfishers and other rare birds — the second sighting of the snail kite was on the no-man's land between the wall and the Rio Grande river — have drawn so many birders to this part of Texas

that birding has become a commercial business along the border.

In acknowledgment of the wall's potential impact on wildlife, construction crews drape potato sacks and other fabric bags on top of the hollow metal posts that spike into the air. The bags are meant to protect the birds in case they land on the posts, one worker explained to Shattil.

Her photographs and others from the project will be displayed on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., to draw attention to proposed legislation that would halt the wall's construction.

"When you look at the wall from the ground, it looks like an artistic statement that will be taken down in a few days," Shattil said.

"It's such an anomaly. It doesn't look like a wall that should exist in the U.S. Especially in Texas."

http://www.denverpost.com/lifestyles/ci_11995806

Photographers detail wildlife at Arizona border

Arizona Daily Star
February 5, 2009
By Jonathon Shacat

SIERRA VISTA — Several photographers were capturing images of wildlife and landscapes at the San Pedro River earlier this week as part of an effort that will highlight the ecological implications of the border wall.

They are part of a team of about 12 photographers associated with the International League of Conservation Photographers who are participating in a three-week expedition along the U.S.-Mexico border that started in San Diego last week and is heading for Texas.

"This region is a shared conservation treasure of international importance that harbors some of the most biodiverse landscapes on the continent. Many species here are found nowhere else in the U.S., and nowhere else in Mexico, and some are found nowhere else on Earth," states the project's action plan.

The team features international award-winning photographers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Dykinga, Kevin Schafer, Wendy Shattil and Roy Toft.

Krista Schlyer, a photographer and writer, came up with the idea for this Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition while she was working on a story in New Mexico about a transboundary bison herd that spends time in both Mexico and the United States.

"I saw them jumping over a barbed wire fence, which they had kind of broken down in their passage. And I knew about the border fence that was being built," she said. "So I thought I wanted to do something about it. I went to the ILCP and asked them if we could do one of these RAVEs and they said sure, so I started organizing it."

Schlyer, 37, who lives in Mt. Rainier, Md., said besides the photographers, the group also includes a three-member film crew from Cornell University, as well as two biologists — one from the U.S. and one from Mexico.

The Department of Homeland Security used authority granted under the Real ID Act to waive dozens of federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, in order to build portions of the border wall.

The aim of the Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition is to add momentum to a movement to repeal the Real ID waiver provision, and to ensure the U.S. respects the wildlife, ecosystems and local people of the borderlands area in border security efforts.

Ian Shive, 30, a photographer who lives in Los Angeles and has a book coming out in September called "The National Parks: Our American Landscape," said he hopes the project will result in change.

He pointed out photographs and paintings helped convince Congress to create Yellowstone National Park as the country's first national park in 1872.

"The opportunity to come out and focus on a specific issue is certainly very appealing to me," he said.

Ted Wood, 53, of Boulder, Colo., a photographer who mostly works as an environmental photojournalist, said he was interested in this project because it is similar to his work.

"Every story that involves nature (in) some way has a human aspect to it, or else nature wouldn't be having a problem. Most of these guys here are wildlife and landscape photographers. I tend to be more of the type that focuses on the people's role in all of these issues," he said.

Bill Odle, who owns land along the border near the San Pedro River, said he appreciates the fact these photographers are bringing attention to the border fence issue.

"I am anti-wall," he said. "I am pro-immigration, but I want it done right. I don't want people climbing over the wall, and falling and breaking their ankles and stuff."

He said the border wall blocks the way for migrating wildlife. He thinks vehicle barriers and barbed wire fencing would be sufficient because they prevent the crossing of vehicles and livestock, but would still allow wildlife to pass through.

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/278975.php

No More Hope: DHS issues notice to proceed with border fence at park

Brownsville Herald
January 13, 2009

It looks like hope has run out for Hope Park.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a notice to proceed with the construction of the border fence that includes Hope Park near the downtown area.

Local officials were notified Tuesday that a notice to proceed with the border fence project had been issued.

The fence will run from an extension of Palm Boulevard to the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course, which is off River Levee Drive, and will be in the areas of Hope Park near downtown Brownsville and the Gateway International Bridge, the notice reads.

Cameron County Judge Carlos H. Cascos said he didn't believe the land involved was county owned. He has often said that the DHS was going to move forward with the fence in the face of public opposition. Although the county had offered an alternative to the fence's construction plan, the DHS rejected its levee-fence proposal.

Brownsville Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr. could not be reached for comment.

Although no actual construction date has been scheduled, the cleaning of the area where the fence will be built is expected to begin soon, the notice reads.

No other information was immediately available.

Lloyd Easterling, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, could not be reached for comment.

The DHS news comes one day after Brownsville city officials agreed to join an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff's waiver of state and local laws in order to build a fence along the border.

The notice is similar to one released two weeks ago in which county officials were notified that site preparations were to begin in eight areas of the county.

These areas include Nemo Road and Weaver's Mountain near Harlingen; west and east Los Indios; La Paloma; Ho chi Minh-Estero, also near Harlingen; and the Riverbend Resort Water Tower and the Public Utilities Board fence line in Brownsville.

Last week, huge dump trucks could be seen traveling to and from the river levee near the Riverbend Resort Water Tower on Highway 281, where 1.6 miles of the fencing will be constructed.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/fence_93633___article.html/hope_notice.html

Public Works Contractor Sukut Construction, Inc. Begins Work on Fence Bordering U.S. and Mexico

(This is a press release from a contractor that is proud of the work that they are doing on the border wall in California's Otay Mountain National Wilderness Area.)

Press Release Newswire
December 23, 2008

Santa Ana, Calif. (PRWEB) December 23, 2008 -- Sukut Construction, Inc. has broken ground on a $11.2 million project to help build a strategic section of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Mexican border fence in the rugged foothills of Otay Mesa.

The project calls for construction of 5.2 miles of border fence and an adjacent access road. Sukut has been subcontracted by Granite Construction for the site development and road construction.

The section of border fence will be constructed at the Otay Mesa illegal border crossing in the foothills above the Tijuana River. The site is south of the city of Dulzura and eight miles from the nearest major road, Highway 94. The remoteness of the location and the steep, rocky terrain make this a popular illegal border crossing, and contribute to the complexity of the job.

"Sukut is California's largest mass excavation company with the equipment and knowledge to successfully complete this type of job," said Sukut Construction, Inc. CEO/President Michael Crawford.

Sukut will begin by widening the 2.5 miles of existing dirt road used by the U.S. Border Patrol to make the route safe for heavy equipment, constructing a 32-foot-wide and 5.2-mile border fence access road. The location's steep grade will require switchback roadway with a maximum grade of 15 percent at the steepest points.

Sukut will use extensive drilling and blasting to clear 530,000 cubic yards of rock in the foothills and employ geo-grid slope stabilization to prevent any rock slides across the Mexican border just three feet away. The project is expected to be completed in the summer of 2009.

Sukut Construction, Inc. is California's largest mass excavation and grading contractor, moving 150 million cubic yards of earth per year. Founded almost 40 years ago and headquartered in Santa Ana, California, with offices in Los Angeles, Riverside and Oceanside, California, the company is nationally recognized for its work on residential, commercial, industrial and retail development mass grading; public works; highway, roads and infrastructure construction; flood and storm water pipe and structures; golf courses and resorts; landfill construction and environmental cleanups; and emergency landslide repair and stabilization.

Information is available on the company's website at http://www.sukut.com/ or by calling Sukut headquarters at (888)-SUKUT01 or (888) 785-8801.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1708734.htm

Border Wall opponent halts construction at Rio Bosque

Newspaper Tree
December 17, 2008

A border wall opponent has stopped construction of a portion of the structure that is to separate the Rio Bosque Park, a wetland in the Lower Valley that is the last remnant of the thick groves of trees and vegetation that once thrived along the banks of the river, from the Rio Grande.

Judy Ackerman stood in the way of construction crews this morning, denying them access to the construction site, which is on International Boundary and Water Commission property directly adjacent to the park. Ackerman is a Northeast El Paso resident active in environmental issues.

Bill Addington, another border wall opponent, said that city of El Paso police and Border Patrol were on the scene, but had not arrested Ackerman yet.

"I hope others will replicate this," said Addington, who made national news when the Wall Street Journal wrote the government's demand he take down a footbridge crossing the Rio Grande. [video] [article]

He said the action by Ackerman marks "the first time anyone has impeded the construction that I know of, and I've been paying attention to this very closely."

Doug Mosier, Border Patrol spokesman, said he didn't know of any other similar instances.
He said that officials still were gathering information.

"The protester at this moment has not been arrested, although that may be forthcoming," he said at about 11:15 a.m. "But we need to wait and see what happens here."

The 372-acre Rio Bosque Park is described on its Web site as a remnant of the wetlands and riverside forests that "once graced the banks of the Rio Grande in the Paso del Norte region. They were the most productive natural habitats in the region, but today they are virtually gone. At Rio Bosque, the environment is still changing, but in a new way. Here, a diverse partnership is working to bring back meaningful examples of the unique and valuable ecosystems once found in our river valley." [link]

A newsletter put out by the Center for Environmental Resource Management, which manages the park, stated the impact of the wall: "At the Park, the visual impact of the fence will be immediate and obvious. The ecological impact will be gradual and more subtle, but no less real. For many animals, the fence will be a barrier to movement between the Rio Grande and the Park and a barrier to genetic exchange. Over time, the fence will affect what species get established at Rio Bosque and, for some species, the long-term health and viability of the populations present."

http://www.newspapertree.com/news/3211-border-wall-opponent-halts-construction-at-rio-bosque

Mexico planting own 'green wall' along border

Austin-American Statesman
December 7, 2008

CIUDAD ACUA, Coahuila — Tractor-trailers rumble across the bridge above, but down on the Rio Grande, it's a peaceful autumn morning as ducks paddle the river and herons glide from bank to bank.

On the U.S. side of the river, in Del Rio , plans are moving ahead for a controversial security wall that will eventually stretch across 670 miles of the southwest border.

But on the Mexican side, authorities have begun work on an entirely different kind of wall: a so-called green wall, made of 400,000 trees to be planted along 217 miles of the Rio Grande.
Eventually, Mexican leaders hope the green wall will stretch the entire length of Mexico's shared border with Texas.

Officials in the state of Coahuila, where the project is beginning, call the green wall a rejection of the U.S. border barrier. The local Mexican officials hope the clusters of cypress, mesquite and ash trees will stand in stark contrast to the concrete and steel fencing being erected by the U.S. Homeland Security Department.

"This is a signal of protest, but it's also an opportunity for dialogue to find shared solutions to the question of immigration," said Gabriela de Valle del Bosque , Coahuila's environmental policy coordinator .

De Valle said the green wall will be an opportunity to bring more environmental consciousness to Mexican border communities. Area residents also will participate in riverside cleanups and classes on ecology and recycling.

Local officials hope the green wall will bring more attention to environmental worries associated with the U.S. border wall, particularly the migration of species such as white-tailed deer.

"If they put in the wall, Mexicans will find another way to get across, but the deer and other animals are not going to find a solution like Mexicans will," said Carlos Lombardo Gomez, who is in charge of technical matters associated with the green wall.

Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira said the green wall will result in Mexico's longest parkland corridor.

Moreira is no stranger to grand gestures. His administration has garnered national headlines in Mexico by ushering in a gay marriage law and has promised a state death penalty for murderous kidnappers, even though Mexico now outlaws the death penalty.

At a ceremony marking the start of the green wall, Moreira blasted the U.S. border barrier as a "wall of hate."

U.S. officials say the border fence is needed to bolster security along the southwest border. And supporters of the U.S. border wall warn that Mexico's green version could potentially aid drug runners and human smugglers.

Jim Gilchrist, president of the Minuteman Project, a U.S. activist group that monitors the border flow of illegal immigrants, said the green wall will "provide effective camouflage for criminal drug and human cargo cartels as they mass their illicit products behind the tree lines, awaiting delivery into the U.S. under cover of darkness."

So far, the state of Coahuila, which extends opposite Big Bend National Park almost to the outskirts of Laredo, has planted 2,500 trees along 25 miles of border. The state has approved about $1 million for the tree-planting program. Plans would extend the green wall in other border states such as Tamaulipas and Chihuahua.

The U.S. border wall is unpopular along much of the Texas border and has been opposed by most border communities in the state.

Despite that opposition, federal officials say that 90 percent to 95 percent of the 670-mile barrier should be completed or under construction before President Bush's term ends in January.

The City of Eagle Pass recently lost a court battle against the U.S. government over the border fence, and construction has begun near the city's downtown. Mayor Chad Foster , one of the border wall's most outspoken critics, said he doubts the change of administrations will halt the wall.

"I don't think President-elect Obama will take office soon enough to impact (the) damage being done in our town," Foster said.

So far, 426 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing have been built, according to the Homeland Security Department, but that includes just 25 miles in Texas.

Federal officials plan to build 116 miles in the state.

In Mexico, few think the green wall will have any real impact on the U.S. border barrier, but local residents are happy that it will bring more green spaces and parks.

Arturo de la Cruz Talavera, who runs daily at a park beneath the international bridge in Ciudad Acuña, is looking forward to the day when the green wall saplings grow into mature trees.

"The green wall is in favor of life, it will create oxygen," he said. "It's not like the steel wall, which just rejects."

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/12/07/1207mexgreenwall.html

'Green' groups push for Coronado National Forest protections

Tucson Citizen
November 26, 2006

A partnership of environmental groups and other nonprofits is calling for a wider swath of wilderness and more emphasis on quiet recreation in the Coronado National Forest.
The Coronado Planning Partnership represents a combined membership of more than 300,000 people in 20 groups. The partnership issued a state-of-the-forest report Nov. 7 aimed at influencing the forest management plan, on which Coronado is taking public comment.

"We wanted to make sure we got a plan based in conservation," said David Hodges, policy director for the Sky Island Alliance, under whose name the partnership report was written.
The group was spurred to write the report by the planned revision of the Coronado management plan, which was last revised in 1986.

"There are a lot of new pressures on the forest that the agency has to take into account," Hodges said.

Population in Pima County has risen by 250,000, illegal immigration has become a destructive flood and global warming looms. None of those was a recognized threat two decades ago, he said.
To deal with the border, the partnership suggests strengthening interagency cooperation and preventing a border fence.

"A border wall would seriously disrupt the movement and availability of resources to a variety of species that are of conservation concern for the Coronado along with ecological systems that support those species," the report says.

The forest should prepare for global warming impacts, including changing habitat boundaries, invasive species and changes in species viability, the group said.

Hodges laments the shift toward using forests for recreation instead of conservation - a move he says leans away from the reason forests exist.

The groups' report calls for several new wilderness areas and "sound sheds" where only quiet activities are allowed. The group identified eight areas the forest should manage as more-restricted wilderness areas, Hodges said.

Despite receiving comments from more than 600 people, the partnership wants more. The group will take public comments on its draft report, with a final version out next spring, Hodges said.

No timeline has been announced for the Coronado management plan revision, though it is expected to take until next summer.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/border/103738.php

A brief in opposition to the Border Wall

Newspaper Tree
November 14, 2008

El Paso County Attorney José R. Rodríguez was invited to testify last week before the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus (MALC) of the Texas House of Representatives in relation to the federal lawsuit the County and the City of El Paso filed this summer challenging Congress’ delegation of authority that allowed Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to waive more than 30 federal, state, and local laws, in order to accelerate the construction of the border wall. You can view the testimony, with attachments, via the link below this article.
Rodriguez's argument was:

-- The number of undocumented immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol dropped 60 percent in relation to the previous year.

-- That the billions of dollars that the federal government will spend building the border wall would be better invested in providing more resources to the federal agents that patrol the border.

-- That the border wall will negatively impact the water supply to many farmers in the Lower Valley and potentially affect the ability of the El Paso County Improvement District #1 to supply water to 50 percent of El Paso residents, as well as hinder bi-national efforts to re-introduce endangered species.

-- Harm conservation efforts that are underway to protect the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, in El Paso’s lower valley, and affect the cultural history of the region, as the border wall cuts through sacred ceremonial land used for centuries by the Ysleta Pueblo del Sur Tribe (Tigua).

***

José R. Rodríguez El Paso County Attorney Testimony to the Mexican American Legislative Caucus On the Border Wall November 13, 2008

I am El Paso County Attorney José R. Rodríguez. Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony to the Mexican American Legislative Caucus regarding the challenges and consequences El Paso County faces as a result of the construction of the Border Wall. The Texas/Mexico border and particularly my jurisdiction in El Paso, Texas is a unique bi-national community. An aerial view of our border community captures the seamless span of our metropolitan area that comprises well over 2 million people within the cities of El Paso and Juarez. El Paso and Juarez share more than just a physical barrier; they share a common identity and culture, and even history, that forms a unique demographic in our region. As such, El Paso’s ethnic, cultural, and linguistically distinct characteristics require a deeper understanding by lawmakers on the needs of this region. A multi-billion dollar Border Wall will serve no purpose other than to avoid the real issue that lawmakers must address- comprehension immigration reform. In fact, if the purpose of the Border Wall is to stop illegal immigration, data proves otherwise, instead showing that illegal immigrant apprehensions have decreased significantly in recent years. For El Paso County, a Border Wall represents not only a waste of time, money, and resources, but also a disruption of crucial waterways, desert ecosystems, sacred Native American land, and long-standing relations between the El Paso and Juarez communities.

El Paso’s Response

In El Paso there is wide spread opposition to the Border Wall. Recognizing that the relationship with its sister city transcends boundaries, El Paso has passed resolutions and filed lawsuits opposing the Border Wall. In 2006, El Paso County Commissioners approved a resolution recognizing the contributions immigrants have made to our communities and condemning efforts by the federal government to erect ineffective physical barriers such as a Border Wall to address illegal immigration. (See Attachment A) In my capacity as El Paso County Attorney, I joined other elected officials in signing a resolution advocating for comprehensive immigration reform legislation. (See Attachment B) El Paso County Commissioners renewed their stance against ineffective policies aimed at curbing illegal immigration by approving a resolution in May 2008 again recognizing immigrants’ contributions to the United States and calling for federal authorities to stop construction of the Border Wall. (See Attachment C) In Summer 2008, El Paso County joined the Texas Border Coalition’s lawsuit against the Wall and, along with the City of El Paso, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, El Paso County Water Improvement District #1, Hudspeth County Conservation and Reclamation District No. 1, Frontera Audubon Society, Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, and Friends of Laguna Atacosa National Wildlife Refuge filed a separate lawsuit challenging the unconstitutional delegation of authority that allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive more than 30 federal laws, as well as state and local laws, in order to accelerate construction of the Border Wall. Waiving these laws poses severe threats to El Paso County’s environment, water resources, Native American religious customs, economic development, and its ability to enforce state and local laws affecting our community. Although the El Paso federal court dismissed the lawsuit, the case is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The unprecedented waiver authority granted to the Secretary of Homeland Security raises several constitutional issues including whether waiver of state and local laws violates Texas’ sovereignty under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Questionable Need for a Border Wall

Recent Department of Homeland Security statements claiming the Border Wall is needed in El Paso to obtain operation control of the border are refuted by the government’s success in keeping immigrants out. In 1993, Operation Hold the Line was implemented throughout the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector. The initiative placed Border Patrol agents in close proximity to one another along a certain area of the border to prevent illegal immigration. In 1992, one year before Operation Hold the Line began, the number of “deportable aliens located by the Border Patrol” was approximately 248,642. In 1994, one year after Operation Hold the Line was implemented, there was an immediate drop in apprehensions to 79,688, a 68 % decrease. Although subsequent years show some fluctuation in the number of arrests, recent years’ data indicate an overwhelmingly decrease in arrests. (See Attachment D) A recent article in the El Paso Times quotes Border Patrol officials as acknowledging that given current resources and zero tolerance policy against illegal immigrants, they “do not anticipate a surge of attempted illegal entries in the coming year”. (See Attachment E) This data clearly indicates that current resources and policies are effective in deterring illegal immigration, thus raising serious questions concerning the federal government’s insistence that a border wall is necessary to stop illegal immigration.

Disruption, Destruction, and Polarization within El Paso County

Impact to El Paso’s Water Supply

Located in El Paso’s lower valley, Water Improvement District #1 (WID) provides water for 69,010 acres of water right lands. According to the WID website, WID contains 156 square miles of water that delivers critical irrigation water to El Paso County residents. As a result of the Border Wall, the WID has been inundated with concerns from area farmers who are worried that the Border Wall would block access to irrigation water provided by the Riverside Canal and prevent them from sustaining their farmlands. Along the canal, the presence of border patrol vehicles is evident by the disintegration of the canal banks. Coupled with the placement of the Border Wall alongside the Riverside Canal, the ability of WID to maintain and control the flow of water that funnels through its canals is in jeopardy. The placement of the Border Wall along an area parallel to the Riverside Canal, along the south bank, poses several threats to El Paso’s water supply including the ability of WID maintenance workers to maintain control gates that direct the flow of water into a canal. Failure to properly maintain the canals could potentially prevent water from reaching the Jonathon Rogers Treatment Plant for processing and distribution to about 50% of El Paso County residents. To date nothing has been memorialized in writing between the WID and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to address WID’s concerns. In recent weeks, discussions have taken place between the two entities with CBP claiming to reduce the impact that the Border Wall will have by proposing to place the Border Wall up on the river’s levee. WID officials continue to warn that this proposal will affect their ability to maintain the canal and will require the WID to heavily invest in herbicides and special equipment.

Environmental Impact

The Border Wall’s anticipated adverse impacts on El Paso County’s desert ecosystem and economic development include serious long term effects to border wildlife and plants, a break in bi-national conservation efforts, and the loss of an emerging eco-tourism market. Although the extent of the long term effects of a Border Wall in the El Paso region is not immediately ascertainable, it is probable that they are irreversible and, over time, can lead to significant loss and even permanent destruction in the ecosystem of the border region. El Paso is a refuge for endangered species including the Mexican gray wolf. Studies indicate that the protection of wolf habitats require open corridors in the border region. Efforts by the United States and Mexico to provide safe habitats and reintroduce the Mexican gray wolf are in direct contrast to the construction of a border wall, which will hinder the free movement of the animal on both sides of the border. Mexico has been vocal in its opposition to the construction of the border wall in large measure because past efforts between the United States and Mexico were underway to protect vital border ecosystems. Decisions made by the United States to place the wall on sensitive environmental lands hinder efforts between the United States and Mexico to collaborate and work on innovative and important environmental issues that are unique to the border region. Rio Bosque Wetlands Park Construction and inevitable maintenance of the Border Wall will harm conservation efforts that are underway to protect the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park. At Rio Bosque, the goal is to re-establish, over time, approximate examples of native plant and animal communities historically found in the river valley. The proposed wall would compromise their ability to achieve this goal which has already received substantial funding from the state and federal government. In a letter to the El Paso Sector Tactical Infrastructure Environmental Assessment (EA), John Sproul, Program Coordinator for Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, raises serious concerns regarding the placement of the wall. Sproul notes the various cumulative effects on Rio Bosque in his comments to the draft EA report: impacts to wildlife, including threatened and endangered species; visual impacts; and, access issues. (See Attachment F) Sproul’s comments regarding efforts by DHS to integrate those proposals were abandoned once the Secretary issued his waiver of all laws that would hinder the Wall from being built. Rio Bosque Wetlands Parks has the potential for becoming a haven for environmental enthusiasts, similar to the Sabal Palm Audubon Center in the Rio Grande Valley. However, the Rio Bosque is likely to fall victim to a similar fate that the Sabal Palm Audubon Center is facing as a result of the Border Wall. Thus, the goal of creating the Rio Bosque into a wetlands sanctuary and possible thriving tourist destination is now in jeopardy.

Cultural Impact to the Ysleta Pueblo del Sur Tribe

The Border Wall will cut through sacred ceremonial land to the Ysleta Pueblo del Sur Tribe (Tigua). This area covers approximately 6-7 miles from the Ysleta Port of Entry to Socorro, Texas. Discussions between the Tigua’s and the CBP were described by Tribal War Captain, Rick Quesada, as minimal at best and plans by Customs and Border Protection to disrupt the ceremonial area are still underway despite protests from the Tiguas.

Polarization between the El Paso and Juarez Communities To many of us, the Border Wall symbolizes a hostile barrier between two communities that have traditionally been closely intertwined. Its construction will impact Mexico’s relationship with the United States on many levels including diplomatic relations and local cooperation. El Paso and Juarez have historically worked close together on important policy issues that affect the community; for example, extending each other assistance during the heavy floods that blanketed the El Paso/Juarez region in 2006. The two communities routinely work jointly on local drug policy, pollution control, and bi-national health initiatives. Instead of bi-national cooperation, the border wall will create distrust and endanger the existing collaborative relationship between the two communities.

Finally, the Border Wall could potentially cause social, cultural, and familial ties in both communities to falter. Both U.S. citizens and Mexican citizens cross the border through the Ports of Entry to shop, visit family, attend schools and recreational events, and obtain medical care. The Border Wall would symbolize a hostile barrier and could potentially affect the cross border services and tourism that both populations take advantage of, causing both communities to suffer economic consequences.

Conclusion

As El Paso County Attorney I have provided testimony to the Texas Senate Committee on International Relations and Trade discussing border security and issues related to local enforcement of immigration law. The current focus on border security again brings to the forefront the need for lawmakers to engage in meaningful discussions regarding comprehensive immigration reform. A multi-billion dollar effort to construct the Border Wall simply does not make sense. At a time when America faces a severe financial crises it is simply irresponsible to pour additional money into a wall that will scar our environmental landscape and damage our relationship with communities across the border. Instead of deterring illegal immigration, the Wall will symbolize not only a failed immigration policy, but also a country barricading itself from the rest of the world. Thank you.

http://newspapertree.com/opinion/3086-a-brief-in-opposition-to-the-border-wall

Border-fence dispute snares rare jaguars

CNN
May 5, 2008

DOUGLAS, Arizona (CNN) -- It's a tale of homeland security concerns blocking wildlife management, and the hue and cry that ensues.

When most people think of jaguars, they think of the jungles of Central and South America, not the remote desert ranges between the United States and Mexico.

That region is known as mountain lion country, and that's what rancher Warner Glenn thought he was tracking when he saddled up his mules on a summer day 12 years ago near Douglas, Arizona.

Glenn has hunted mountain lions for 60 years, since he was eight years old. But Glenn was stunned when he saw what his hunting dogs had chased up to a high mountain perch.

The rancher took what's believed to be the first photo of a live jaguar in the United States. But it wasn't his last. In 2006, some 40 miles away, Glenn and his hunting party again cornered a jaguar -- a different one.

Jaguars, an endangered species, have a breeding population in northern Mexico. Scientists believe there are no more than 120 left in the wild there.

It's believed that since 1910, the cats are only visitors north of the border. They have been virtually unstudied here until recently.

But Glenn and other conservationists worry that the possible return of breeding jaguars to the United States could be stopped in its tracks. The reason: the border fence.

Last month the Department of Homeland Security waived 30 environmental laws to finish 470 miles of the fence by the end of the year.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Congress that the agency continues to talk to some 600 landowners along the border to get their input. But in order to comply with the congressional mandate, he said, there is no time to deal with "unnecessary delays caused by administrative processes or potential litigation."

"We are currently in a lawless situation at the border," says Chertoff. "I feel an urgency to get this tactical infrastructure in. And although we're going to be respectful of the environment, we're going to be expeditious."

Two environmental groups, Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, have filed appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming the waivers are unconstitutional and set a dangerous precedent.

"National security and environmental protection do not have to be at odds with each other," says Defenders of Wildlife spokesman Matt Clark. "If we can drop this arbitrary deadline for constructing the fence and go through the proper procedures, then there are inevitably ways to minimize environmental impact, but as it is now it's throwing all of those laws out the window."

Mountain lion tracker Jack Childs also worries about the impact of the fence on local wildlife, especially the jaguar.

Childs captured the first video of a live jaguar in the late summer of 1996, a few months after Warner Glenn. Watch Childs and Glenn talk about efforts to preserve the jaguar »

"I knew historically there had been a few jaguars sighted in Arizona but in the last hundred years never in any numbers."

His encounter sparked a passion for the big cats. Along with wife Anna and biologist Emil McCain, he created the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project.

Childs and McCain hike into remote mountain areas where the jaguars roam and have placed more than 50 motion sensor cameras near the border. They've taken 69 photos of three different jaguars since 2001, including several of the same cat Childs first saw in 1996.

He has nicknamed that cat Macho B.

A jaguar's spots are like fingerprints -- each cat has a unique set. One of the spots on Macho B resembles a Pinocchio cartoon figure, and that's how they identify him.

"We spend a lot of time walking along the border during the daytime, and we actually find his tracks going through the fence, so we know for sure that he crosses back and forth," says Childs.

"A fence like that is going to inhibit wildlife movements and migrations back and forth. It's not going to effectively stop human traffic. They've got wire cutters and torches." See where the jaguars have been spotted »

Childs says the fence also has an impact on wildlife because drug runners and human traffickers have been pushed up into the mountain areas to avoid the fence in the lowland valleys.

"It's impacting the animals number one, what's going on down there. It's almost brought my wildlife study to a stop because they (the traffickers) are tearing down my cameras as fast as I'm putting them up because they think we're taking pictures of them."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finds itself in a unique position. Its mission is wildlife and habitat protection, but it must uphold another federal agency's mission to override environmental concerns. Bill Radke, manager of the San Bernardino Wildlife Refuge, says the Border Patrol is trying to work with his agency.

"The hope is that by working with Border Patrol that we can meet the national security mandate and at the same time protect the wildlife," says Radke. "Border Patrol is putting up camera towers but are putting them up on areas that are off the refuge. They're working on barriers but not barriers that would impede wildlife and large animals like jaguars."

At 6 foot 6, with steely blue eyes, dressed in leather chaps astride his mule, rancher Warner Glenn is every inch the American cowboy. And he is a man forever changed by his encounters with the jaguar. He has written a book, "Eyes of Fire," about his experience. He says he'd like to "invite Mr. Bush to come out on a mule" so he can see "what's going on here in these mountains."

For Glenn, the cat represents all that is wild about the Southwest.

"It would be a loss to me that maybe my granddaughter or my daughter wouldn't be able to see one like I have. It's just an animal that's a beautiful, magnificent cat and they're having a little bit of trouble surviving. But they're doing it, and I would hate to see us do anything that would cause the survival of that cat to go backwards.

"I'm a livestock rancher, but I wouldn't mind donating a few calves to that jaguar, so to speak."

Biologist Emil McCain agrees.

"They are part of our natural heritage. They are part of the American West. They are part of the American wild as much as the bald eagle or the grizzly bear, and the jaguar is really special because it is such an elusive and beautiful creature [that] it evokes a sense of imagination and curiosity about the natural world."

Though the jaguar is elusive, conservationists say the animal is caught -- in the political crossfire at the border.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/05/05/jaguars.fence/?iref=mpstoryview#cnnSTCText

Rodríguez hopes county commissioners will appeal border fence lawsuit ruling

Rio Grande Guardian
September 13, 2008

EL PASO, September 13 - El Paso County Attorney José Rodríguez hopes an appeal is lodged after a judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop construction of the border fence.

“The law firm Mayer Brown LLP of Washington, D.C., who is handling the litigation, is already working on the appeal, which the County Attorney will encourage El Paso Commissioner’s Court to join,” Rodríguez’s office said, in a statement issued late Friday.

Rodríguez, a leading member of the Texas Border Coalition, said plaintiffs have 90 days to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The lawsuit was filed on June 23, 2008, by El Paso County, the City of El Paso, the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1, the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Native American Indian tribe, and Mark Clark, owner of Brownsville’s Galeria 409.

Later, three South Texas environmental conservation groups, Frontera Audubon Society, Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, joined the lawsuit.

The lawsuit challenged Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's statutory authority to issue waivers of more than three dozen federal laws, as well as related state, local and tribal laws, to expedite the construction of a border fence.

But, in a blow to border wall opponents, U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo granted the Department of Homeland Security’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit based on the merits of the case.

In his ruling, Montalvo held that the waivers used by Chertoff to expedite the construction of the border fence were constitutional because “…Congress constitutionally delegated its authority in the Waiver Legislation.”

Montalvo further ruled that the Waiver legislation did not violate the 10th amendment because the waivers were issued with the intent to “preempt state and local laws, which would interfere with Congress’s objective to expeditiously construct the border fence.”

Earlier this month, Montalvo denied a request for a request for a preliminary injunction against the construction of the border fence in El Paso County. Rodríguez was unavailable for comment on Thursday’s ruling by Montalvo.

When the request for a preliminary injunction was denied, Rodríguez said he disappointed. “This lawsuit involves an unprecedented delegation of authority by the Congress to the executive branch, because it allows DHS Secretary Chertoff to disregard long-standing federal laws that provide protection and benefits to the public and the environment,” Rodríguez said at the time.

In April, Chertoff announced that DHS was sidestepping 36 federal laws and regulations, including the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, in an effort to complete 670 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border wall by year’s end.

Chertoff said he had the right to do so under the terms of the REAL ID Act of 2005. Previously, Chertoff had used his waiver authority for two portions of border fence in Arizona and one portion in San Diego.

Jim Chapman, board president of the Frontera Audubon Society, said his group joined the lawsuit to in order to ask the court to declare section 102 of the Real ID Act unconstitutional and to prevent DHS from building walls, roads, or other infrastructure on the border that do not fully comply with all of the nation’s environmental laws.

“To instantly dissolve 96 years of environmental laws and protection with a mere wave of the hand is nothing short of monstrous,” Chapman said. “If laws can be so easily swept aside on the border, the same precedent could be applied anywhere, from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Yellowstone National Park. If our nation’s laws are optional, they aren’t really laws.”

Wayne Bartholomew, executive director of Frontera Audubon, said that the fate of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge system is of particular concern to environmentalists.

“Further habitat losses in the Valley, which serves as a vital stop over and feeding grounds for hundreds of species of migrating coastal shorebirds, inland waterfowl, and passerines, and nesting habitat for approximately 150 more species, will be catastrophic,” Bartholomew said.

Consisting of individual tracts of native habitat linked by the Rio Grande, the LRGVNWF creates a wildlife corridor, providing endangered species such as the ocelot and jaguarundi sufficient territory to find food, water, and mates. Migratory birds also rely on it to rest and refuel on their annual journeys, as well as for nesting.

Maps released by DHS show the border wall slicing through many refuge tracts, and cutting off others from the river. The wall will fragment habitat, block migratory pathways, deny animals’ access to fresh water, and isolate breeding populations of endangered ocelot and jagurandi.

“It's taken 30 years, $80 million, and back-breaking effort to create an 80,000 acre wildlife corridor along the last 250 miles of the Rio Grande. To put a fence or wall through that is insanity,” said Keith Hackland, president of the Friends of the Wildlife Corridor.

Shane Wilson, president of the Friends of Laguna Atascosa, agreed.

“Currently, there are only 80 to 100 wild ocelots remaining in the continental U.S., and they cannot hope to survive without the wildlife corridor and the protection of the Endangered Species Act,” Wilson said. “The border wall, as proposed, will ensure that future generations will never witness the spectacular beauty of seeing an ocelot in the wild.”

Earlier this week, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham told Congress that his agency needs an extra $400 million in order to build the 370 miles of border fencing it has committed to. About 70 miles of fencing is slated for the Texas-Mexico border.

Basham blamed the higher cost of fuel and steel and a shortage of labor. He said he could not guarantee that the fencing would be constructed by the end of President Bush’s term in office.

In a statement, Texas Border Coalition Chairman Chad Foster urged Congress to reject any request by the Bush Administration for an additional $400 million. He called the $50 billion border fence project “wasteful.”

http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=19

Suit to fight border fence is dismissed

El Paso Times
September 13, 2008

EL PASO -- A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit filed by El Paso County, the city of El Paso, environmental groups and others against the controversial border fence, County Attorney José Rodríguez's office said Friday.

The lawsuit argued that Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff did not have the authority to waive 30 environmental and other laws to construct the fence, described as the "border wall" by its opponents.

U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo ruled that the waivers to expedite the construction of the fence were constitutional "because 'Congress constitutionally delegated its authority in the Waiver Legislation.' "

Rodríguez said in a statement that plaintiffs have 90 days to file an appeal to the Supreme Court, and that an appeal by the firm Mayer Brown LLP of Washington, D.C., was already being prepared Friday.

El Paso Mayor John Cook said he and other mayors of Texas border cities are not necessarily opposed to fences.

"But we are opposed to them putting them in without local input," Cook said.
The border fence in El Paso, which stands 15 feet tall, has been the target of marches and protests, including a small demonstration Friday evening where a section of fence is being installed near Yarbrough Drive.

Proponents of the fence said that it would help secure the border by stopping drug-loaded vehicles from driving across, and that, if the fence didn't stop undocumented immigrants, it would at least slow them long enough to give Border Patrol agents time to catch them.

Fence opponents call it a costly eyesore that sends an unfriendly message while damaging the environment.

"The wall is an environmental disaster," said Bill Addington, who's on the executive committee of the Rio Grande Sierra Club Chapter and whose family owns land in Hudspeth County near the border.

"It is immoral -- an immoral crime for anyone to put up a barrier or wall between animals that need it (the Rio Grande) for drinking water," Addington said. "You are also fragmenting habitat. All these animals that have traditionally gone back and forth cannot pass."

Wednesday, Homeland security officials told Congress that the 670-mile fence might not be finished this year and that it was $400 million over budget because of increased fuel and steel costs and limited available labor.

About 340 miles of fence has been built. Congress so far has approved $2.6 billion for constructing the fence.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_10451761

Feds sue state to get parkland for fence

San Antonio Express-News
September 6, 2008

BROWNSVILLE — Weeks after the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department rejected the Department of Homeland Security's offer of $105,000 to buy land to mitigate effects of a fence cutting through a Rio Grande dove preserve, DHS has followed through with a lawsuit for the land.

The suit, filed in federal court in Brownsville, is accompanied by a declaration of taking for the 3.2 acres of land necessary for the fence and its right-of-way through the Anacua segment of the Las Palomas preserve.

Federal attorneys say in the declaration the fence will not cut off access to the parkland between the fence and the Rio Grande.

TPW officials say the proposed “border barrier gate” will undo decades of habitat restoration.
TPW Executive Director Carter Smith had hoped the long history of game wardens working with Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies would give their agency the type of “unique status” that brought a court compromise for the University of Texas-Brownsville segment of the fence.

But he said Friday the agency is resigned there will be a fence as planned. He said his priority was making sure there's no construction activity during white wing dove season, which is this weekend and next.

Smith said he hoped an agreement could be reached guaranteeing TPW is present during all phases of construction to help minimize environmental damage.

“DHS has shown no sign of being willing to compromise on the design or location of the fence itself, but there are a host of other considerations that we are interested in,” he said.
He called current plans for the 30- to 50-foot-wide barrier gate “perplexing.”

“Right now we have been told they are going to build a fence and then leave an opening for a gate that at some point in the distant future they will complete,” he said.

DHS remains committed to completing 370 miles of barrier by the end of 2008. As of Aug. 13, the agency had completed 184 miles of pedestrian fencing, much of it in the other Southwest border states.

Attempts by environmental and other groups to contest the constitutionality of Homeland Security's waiver of environmental laws have so far failed.

Last Friday, a federal judge in El Paso denied a request for an injunction against fence construction by plaintiffs, including the city and county of El Paso, Frontera Audubon Society, and Friends of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/state/Feds_sue_state_to_get_parkland_for_fence.html