I did my news report assignment on the Trump Wall’s impacts on the diverse, wildlife environments in Texas and along its borders.
The Story:
What: President Trump’s US-Mexico border wall could pose a threat to vulnerable wildlife, plants, and the growing ecotourism industry in Texas and its border regions.
Who: Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin (Norma Fowler & Tim Keitt) published a letter outlining the potential ecological damage of such a major project in the area.
When: Whenever/if the wall gets built
Why: Texas currently has walls along its border with Mexico approximately 100 miles long. However, until now, the wall has gone through mostly desert and cities, but it’s on the verge of hitting the Rio Grande regions.
Where: Texas and the bordering areas surrounding the state
How: The wall would destroy much of the habitat biodiversity of plants and animals these areas.
Impacts of the Wall:
Here’s a closer look at the impacts from the scientists themselves: https://youtu.be/it6O3Pf4jFQ
- It’s set to cut through hundreds of miles of protected federal land, which includes Big Bend National Park the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
- Construction would directly destroy the habitats and resources that animals need in order to survive.
- Use of trucks and equipment in order to change the landscape.
- The wall would destroy the biodiversity of the area, especially for the Riparian forest and threatened Tamaulipan thorn-scrub ecosystems.
- It would fragment animal and plant habitats with a physical barrier.
- It would restrict their movements and seed dispersals.
- Though they might leave small gaps for animals to get through, normally they won’t use them.
- Even if animals could go over the wall, they normally will choose not to.
- The wall would also divide breeding populations of animals, such as the ocelot.
Local animals that could be affected:
The Green Jay and Whiskerbush Cactus
The Ocelot
The Zebra longwing Butterfly
The American black bear
How we can decrease these impacts’ effects:
Scientists suggests that these impacts could be lessened by:
- limiting the extent of physical barriers and associated roads
- designing barriers to permit animal passage
- substituting less biologically harmful methods, such as electronic sensors, for physical barriers
Or, we don’t build the wall!
Relevance to Class and Society:
- By building the wall, we increase the human impacts we have on nature while aiding in habitat destruction and degradation caused by the construction and the roads on either side of the wall.
- The wall symbolizes the human dominance we try to have over nature.
- The wall may pose a threat to all 3 pillars of sustainability for these regions
- Local recreation and ecotourism declines may cause a negative economic impact.
- Birdwatching generates $344 million in the Lower Rio Grande region alone
- Private land owners who don’t want the wall on their property should hold precedence, but are still fighting to keep their land.
- Barriers that are created would destroy much of the environment in the areas and those that aren’t far enough from the river could potentially trap animals causing many environmental issues.
- Local recreation and ecotourism declines may cause a negative economic impact.
Questions Raised by the News:
- What are some ways that we could stop the wall from being built?
- Is there anything circulating through the Texas government that already is fighting against the wall being built?
- Why don’t people talk about the environmental and ecological impacts on this wall instead of focusing on political standings
References:
uhttps://phys.org/news/2018-03-border-wall-texas-animals-scientists.html
uhttps://inhabitat.com/trumps-border-wall-threatens-texas-plants-and-wildlife/
uhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocelot (picture)