The butterflies that could stop Trump’s wall

Anthony Zurcher North America reporter

3 April 2019

The obstacles to President Donald Trump's border wall are not confined to the four walls of Congress. As areas are cleared to start building new sections, some landowners, including a butterfly sanctuary, have sued to stop the construction.

Marianna Trevino Wright sits on a bench near a wooded section of the National Butterfly Center and begins identifying animals.

Scissortail flycatchers, green jays, olive sparrows and clay-coloured thrushes swoop by, pecking at oranges set out as a snack and splashing in a bubbling fountain. From the tree branches above, great-tailed grackles screech and whistle like avian car alarms.

Closer to the earth, a menagerie of butterflies flit among the nearby flowering bushes. Zebra Heliconians and large orange sulfurs; queens and red-bordered pixies.

Then there are the other sights and sounds at the centre.

The hum of a US Department of Homeland Security helicopter high overhead. Border Patrol agents buzzing by on motorcycles and ATVs, their faces obscured by masks and goggles, pistols at their side.

The rumble of trucks dragging tyres behind them, smoothing dusty roads so the footprints of interlopers can more easily be spotted.

A government powerboat, with menacing .30-calibre machine guns on its deck, roaring down the river.

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Proposed border wall will harm Texas plants and animals, scientists say

Date:  March 30, 2018

Source:  University of Texas at Austin

Summary:

In the latest peer-reviewed publication on the potential impacts of a border wall on plants and animals, conservation biologists, led by a pair of scientists from The University of Texas at Austin, say that border walls threaten to harm endangered Texas plants and animals and cause trouble for the region's growing ecotourism industry.

In a letter publishing Monday in Frontiers of Ecology and the Environment, Norma Fowler and Tim Keitt, both professors in the Department of Integrative Biology, examine what would happen if more of Texas' roughly 1,200 miles of border with Mexico were to be walled off, contributing to habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation and ecosystem damage. Other states have shorter borders than Texas has and more barriers already in place; in Texas, there are walls along only about 100 miles of the border with Mexico. Congress just exempted the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge from the new fencing project, but many miles of new barriers are set to be built on other federal lands, most of which are part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

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Protest set for Texas wildlife refuge at ground zero of Trump's border wall plan

The Santa Ana refuge, home to migratory birds, butterflies and ocelots, could soon be dominated by a militarised barrier

Tom Dart in Houston

Sat 27 Jan 2018 12.00 GMTLast modified on Sat 27 Jan 2018 12.01 GMT

As politicians in Washington quarrel over funding for border security, a protest rally is planned for Saturday at the Texas wildlife centre that is set to be one of the first locations of Donald Trump’s wall.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Santa Ana national wildlife refuge, a 2,088-acre site by the Rio Grande river that is festooned with Spanish moss and a haven for migratory birds, butterflies and ocelots. But campaigners fear the sanctuary will be wrecked if the government builds a giant barrier through it.

 “It’s one of the most biodiverse refuges in the United States,” said Scott Nichol of the Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy organisation that is one of the groups holding the event in a field adjacent to the refuge.

Ocelots – small, spotted wild cats – are endangered in the US because of habitat destruction and Nichol fears that a wall would trap them, not only restricting their movement but killing them if the area floods during a storm. “That basically turns the refuge into a death trap, the waters rise and the animals all drown,” he said.

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