Save Big Bend’s Wildlife From the Bulldozers

Big Bend National Park is one of the wildest places left in America. Now bulldozers are tearing through it.

The Trump administration has begun clearing land in Big Bend for new border infrastructure, threatening a spectacular desert ecosystem that wildlife has depended on for generations.

Big Bend is part of a much larger landscape stretching across the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Black bears, mountain lions, migratory birds, and other animals depend on connected habitat across this region for food, shelter, migration, dispersal, and reproduction.
Black bears are a powerful example of why those connections matter. After disappearing from Big Bend, bears from northern Mexico crossed the Rio Grande and naturally recolonized the park beginning in the late 1980s. Their remarkable return was possible in part because protected habitat remained available and bears could move through the larger cross-border landscape.

New barriers, roads, and other border infrastructure could disrupt or sever those wildlife connections.

And the destruction is already underway. Federal contractors have begun bulldozing miles of sensitive habitat near Big Bend’s iconic Santa Elena Canyon. Plans for additional barriers, paved roads, and other infrastructure could further fragment habitat in an area that should be protected for wildlife and future generations.

The administration has also waived major environmental laws that would ordinarily require formal environmental review and compliance before projects like these move forward.

Border security does not have to mean bulldozing a national park. The Department of Homeland Security can pursue less destructive approaches to securing the border without unnecessarily cutting off wildlife movement or permanently damaging irreplaceable habitat.

Once these corridors are disrupted and habitat is destroyed, restoring the landscape and the connections wildlife depend on could be extraordinarily difficult.

Please sign the petition to tell the Secretary of Homeland Security to stop destructive border construction in Big Bend National Park and protect the wildlife corridors that black bears, mountain lions, migratory birds, and other animals need to survive.

The petition to the Secretary of Homeland Security reads: Immediately halt border barrier and patrol-road construction in Big Bend National Park that destroys habitat and threatens vital wildlife corridors. Protect black bears, mountain lions, migratory birds, and other wildlife by pursuing border security measures that do not unnecessarily fragment this irreplaceable national park.
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Source: https://www.npca.org/articles/11477-administration-begins-bulldozing-through-big-bend-national-park

Photo credit Cristóbal López/NPCA