Continental Divide: Borderlands Wildlife, People, and the Wall
A new photo exhibit this week on Capitol Hill emphasizes the potential impacts a contiguous wall along our southern border would have on communities and wildlife. I encourage you to come out and see the the exhibit featuring images taken primarily during a three and a half week expedition with the International League of Conservation Photographers along the 2000-mile border between the United States and Mexico. The expedition included 13 photographers who documented a diverse range of borderlands flora, fauna and cultures.
Although 600 miles of wall have previously been built, there are still gaps where animals can cross the border. But filling these gaps would have disastrous effects. Endangered species like jaguars, Mexican gray wolves, and Sonoran pronghorn may not survive in the long term if the wall fragments their populations and prevents them from reaching essential water — like the Rio Grande River — and other resources. The California condor, Mexican long-nosed bat, bighorn sheep, and ocelot rely on the binational conservation efforts already underway across the area, which would be jeopardized by a barrier. These are iconic, and already-imperiled species, whose survival depends on both cross-border habitat and coordinated recovery partnerships between U.S. and Mexican agencies, NGOs, and individuals because species whose ranges are reduced and fragmented are more prone to extinction.
Defenders, in a groundbreaking report, identified five biological hotspots along the border that protect some of the best, last remnants of our natural heritage. These hotspots are under threat from many anthropogenic factors and adding a new threat — a border wall — will make conservation more difficult or even impossible. The damage to the habitat and landscape will be near irreversible.
The goal of this exhibit is to reveal the nature of wild and human communities along the border to help ensure that decisions are based on greater understanding of borderlands realities. Lack of understanding of this place, the ecological communities, and the lives of the people who live here have made it far too easy for to see the borderlands as a bargaining chip for other priorities.
Please join us on Capitol Hill to view Continental Divide. The exhibit will be open to the public for viewing in the Russell Senate Office Building Rotunda from June 11, 2018 — June 15, 2018.
You can also join us in expressing unified concern over the U.S.-Mexico border wall’s negative impacts on biodiversity and binational conservation. These concerns are described in the article “Nature Divided, Scientists United: U.S.-Mexico Border Wall Threatens Biodiversity and Binational Conservation,” co-authored by Defenders scientists.
