The Border Wall in Arizona Is Killing Wildlife and Wrecking the Environment

Elizabeth Whitman August 2, 2019 11:04AM

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Elizabeth Whitman

One of three dead birds caught between the double panels of the wire mesh fence, all within 50 feet of each other.

In Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, more than five miles of double wire mesh fencing, i.e. pedestrian fencing, and some 25 miles of vehicle barriers stretch across the park's southern border with Mexico. The Trump administration plans to intensify those walls by replacing them with steel bollards, and construction is slated to begin August 21.

Environmentalists and federal land-management agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have said that the proposed new wall would be even more detrimental to wildlife and the environment than the existing barriers already are. On a trip to the border last Thursday, we documented the devastation wrought by the current wall on wildlife and the surrounding environment in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.