Arizona's Biodiversity Threatened by Trump's Wall

It is a small jewel of biodiversity stuck on the border between the United States and Mexico. Organ Pipe's national monument, famous for its recognizable cactus, became Friday, August 23, the construction of new sections of the border wall that Donald Trump promised to extend to the entire line of separation between the two. country. The environmental activists denounce a project and a project harmful to the environment.

The National Parks Service has announced the closure of one of Organ Pipe Roads, east of Lukeville and its border crossing, for "security reasons related to the construction of border infrastructure".

. @ OrganPipeNPS has officially closed the southeastern section of the park "in response to public safety concerns associated with border infrastructure construction activities." pic.twitter.com/ogMPhLVqFz

Teams of workers set to work to replace the old barriers with new models 9 meters high. These new sections have the distinction of being the first built thanks to the money of the Pentagon. Last February, Donald Trump proclaimed a state of emergency to circumvent the blockage of the Congress, majority Democratic, which refused to grant funding to his project. After a long court battle, the Supreme Court - now with a Conservative majority - finally allowed the work to begin by validating the arguments of the government.

BREAKING: First panels of Trump #BorderWall installed at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument today.

Heartbreak to watch this senseless 30-ft monstrosity rip through the most spectacular Sonoran desert ecosystem anywhere on the planet. pic.twitter.com/D09lbUGUh8

Angry environmentalists

Several environmental organizations have come together to sue in the hope of canceling or delaying construction. They believe that the work initiated by the Trump administration violates several environmental standards that the government has illegally suspended. They point out that in the Sonoran Desert, the construction of a wall could lead to the extinction of Canadian sheep and certain wolf species, which could no longer migrate south of the border to mate with their Mexican counterparts.

Field surveys and the start of work in the Organ Pipe Park particularly angered Laiken Jordhal, former ranger of the Organ Pipe Park, now in charge of border issues at the think-thank Center for Biological Diversity. "It is amazing and sad to see that the Trump border wall will be built through the beautiful Sonoran ecosystem," he laments.

He is focusing his time and energy on fighting the construction of the wall that would endanger biodiversity along the border from the Rio Grande Valley to California.

>> To read also: the webdocumentary, America at the foot of the wall

Laiken Jordahl is particularly concerned about the fate of Quitobaquito spring, located a few hundred meters from the border. This oasis is the only habitat in the world of a fish species, the Sonoyta pupfish, as well as the Kinosternon turtle sonoriense. Drilling the groundwater to create the concrete needed to build the wall could lead to their disappearance.

Trump waived the #EndangeredSpeciesAct to build his racist wall, and now they're sucking 28 million gallons of water out of a desert aquifer for concrete. Directly imperiling the endangered Sonoyta mud turtle, protected under the Act. The wall may accelerate the #ExtinctionCrisis. https://t.co/aovowziV4i pic.twitter.com/5dbulcAwfy

"The National Park Service has always warned that groundwater drilling was the worst threat to Quitobaquito, and Trump's wall could be a nail in his coffin," warned Laiken Jordahl.

Walls in different forms, inherited from the Clinton and Bush Jr. administrations, already exist on nearly a third of the border (1,046 km out of 3,141). Donald Trump and his administration have already awarded contracts worth $ 2.8 billion for border walls to replace existing walls with higher walls. Only 27 km are currently unpublished.

However, among the government's future projects, other sensitive areas could be lost, including Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, just a few kilometers from Organ Pipe.