Conservationists vow to continue border wall fight as Big Bend celebrates 82nd birthday

Activists have largely stopped the US government’s plans to build a giant wall through Big Bend National Park, but campaigners warn that their fight is ongoing.

Big Bend National Park was designated 82 years ago on June 12. The famous park encompasses a river valley and breathtaking desert scenery in a corner of Texas at the US-Mexico border.

US President Trump is determined to build a wall across the entirety of the US-Mexico border and has already succeeded in spoiling the landscape at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, where a 30-foot-tall wall has already been built through parts of that public park. US Customs and Border Protection is said to have largely abandoned plans to construct a giant wall in Big Bend, but construction is underway for other border enforcement infrastructure that national park advocates fear will cause irreparable damage to the park.

 “We want everyone to take action,” said Erika Pelletier, the Texas and Oklahoma region lead at the National Parks Conservation Association. “The existing infrastructure that is there to protect the border has been working.”

Pelletier and NPCA hosted a call to mark the 82^nd anniversary of Big Bend National Park and to provide an update on their efforts to stop the planned construction of the massive border wall through the park.

NPCA said officials at Customs and Border Protection provided the group with revised plans for construction in the park. The plans include staging areas for the construction of patrol roads, barriers, and other infrastructure short of a 30-foot-tall high wall, which CBP still plans to build just outside Big Bend park boundaries.

Alex Johnson, NPCA’s southwest regional coordinator, said that activists should not ease up on the pressure even as CBP seems to have compromised on its initial plans for a wall through the park.

Johnson presented footage from Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument showing how sections of the border wall there are already having a profoundly negative impact on wildlife.

Some of the biggest criticisms of Trump’s border wall is that it won’t stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States while it will have devastating ecological implications, effectively cutting ecosystems in two. Johnson said it appears the Trump administration is determined to ignore these concerns.

“The administration is waiving virtually every environmental and cultural protection law on the book,” Johnson said. “This has been happening for years at a number of national park sites and this should alarm everyone.”

Johnson’s footage shows a young javelina and adult mountain lion trying to pass through the wall to shelter and food on the other side, ultimately failing.

“If the wall were to be removed there would be immediate relief to some of these wildlife populations,” Johnson said.

Anana Clair Beasley, a Big Bend region business owner and leader of the grassroots coalition No Big Bend Wall, said the US government is exaggerating the threat posed along the border in the region to justify the ongoing construction. 

No Big Bend Wall has grown to about 150 individual members and dozens of local and regional organizations mobilizing to stop the planned construction of the Big Bend border wall. She said the new plans proposed by CBP are an improvement, but the group is arguing that no new infrastructure is needed, arguing that CBP’s existing assets are sufficient for an area already shown to see very few attempted illegal border crossings given the rough terrain.

Beasley reported that contractors are now setting up man camps and staging areas and have begun to haul in equipment and material to launch construction, including steel and aggregate for building roads.

She said the contractors have already ran into conflict with local judges, county commissioners and the water board in an attempt to force the companies to comply with local and county laws. Beasley said this has had an effect of slowing the work down some, but not stopping it.

CBP’s revised plans on the wall tells the group No Big Bend Wall that their months long campaign is making a difference.

“We still feel very hopeful that our voices have an impact,” Beasley said. “The fight has kept going. We’re about four months into it now.”

NPCA and other groups continue to fight the administration, arguing that the government’s excuse of an emergency at the border justifying the construction in the park is fiction.

“The existing infrastructure that is there [in Big Bend National Park] to protect the border has been working,” said Pelletier. 

“There is no emergency here,” Beasley added.