Hello, it's just me again. Today it's James.
I'm joined by Eric Mesa, who will introduce himself in a second, and we're going to be discussing the environmental and human impact of the border policies in the last decade or thereabouts, and to include the border wall.
So Eric, would you like to introduce yourself.
Thank you, James. Of course.
My name is Eric Mesa. I you hear him pronounced, and I am the Border of the Lands coordinator for Sierrah Club, part of the Grand Canyon Chapter based out of tuson Arisona, which is the on cedar land of the Tona Autumn and Pasco Yaki people.
Many other tribes America. Holm thank you for having me.
Yeah, thank you very much for joining us. And it's a fantastic introduction.
So, Eric, I think if we start out by just explaining what the border wall kind of looks like in the landscape and how it breaks in the landscape, because although it's something that you and I might see almost every day, for a lot of people, I think that they kind of saw on the news three or four years ago and then then you start reporting on it. So can you explain like the physical kind of stature and impact of the wall.
Yes, well, I think for each person it definitely takes into it with the perspective that they might have. You know, it definitely impacts people in a different way. But one thing that you can like notice as soon as you see it is how massive it is, how it just divides these pristine, beautiful Sonoran desert lands and divides them on half. So that already for us as on organization, since the beginning and the conception of the idea of start rolling all of these remote areas, start looking at
the environmental impact that social action can have. So it's always really hard to see and just to imagine and to think about all of the different things, not only people, but all the different movement that used to happen in these areas now as being completely interrupted.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I remember in twenty twenty, I was out on Kume Island in a place called Campo filming a Kumi I protest against the desecration of their sacred sites by the Actually I was writing for this Yerra club and I saw a deer that day, like and it just came up to the wall, and it was like, what the fuck do I do? Like this wasn't here last time I came here, and.
It was just this.
Really, I don't know why.
Obviously the world those horrible, cruel things to people every day, but I don't know why. It struck me at how unnatural and unwelcome it was in that place, but it did. So I think maybe if we could look at these different The wall spans a huge area and stops randomly throughout that area, so preps you could explain some of
the ecological impacts. Maybe if we still where you are in Tucson, and then we move gradually west to where I am at the western end of it, and would that be a good sort of way to do that.
Yeah, of course.
Well, here in Tucson, our closest border is Nogalles, and once we started moving east or I'm sorry west from there, the closest one right next to it's called Sassabi, And as you mentioned Nogalles, there is big walls, and then soon it stops because then the terrain gets very uneven. There is a range of mountain called the Pahariito Mountains, which is one of the most biodiverse areas here in
the Southwest, with some endemic species of plants and animals. Actually, thankfully the wall stops there, and then there is certain areas that there is a lot of unfinished projects, or we also call them orphan walls, like sections of the wall that never were completed, and then you stand there. Unfortunately, to get them up there, there was a lot of impact.
For example, they use dynamite to blow up entire mountaintops to get equipment up there, and some of the cases without even constructing any wall at the end.
So it's really unfortunate because a lot of.
Debris that came out of these explosions right now, it's causing a lot of erosion issues and it's like moving into those canyons and covering a lot of the.
Vegetation that was there before.
Then as you keep coming passing through the Phariito Mountains, then you get to the area called the Buenos Aires National Refuge near the town of Sassab, and there is a large segment of a wall there with twenty six gaps, small gaps, big gaps, and all of these gaps have been there since the beginning of the construction. CBP recently announced that they're going to be closing some of these gaps.
They have been used by migrants a lot recently, but in recent days actually the influx of migrants have definitely declined a lot, different to what other people seen in other parts of the country, but especially in this area in Arizona, we didn't see the huge amounts of migrants coming after Title forty two.
So once you pass that section, then you get.
To what's the Once you pass the Sasab Report of Entry, then you enter the Tona Autumn Reservation. Ton Autumn decided that they didn't want to wall there, and they fought for it, and they didn't build a wall.
Enter is about.
I'm not really sure about the number of miles. I think there is about sixteen to twenty two miles of just the land that only contains what's known as a.
Vehicle brier or normandy barriers.
These are made out of like old train tracks, which we really like environmentally speaking because it allows the movement of the animals and the flow of the water as well. And then once you pass the reservation, then you go into Organ Pipe National Park, and then you start seeing more wall sections on areas like Kito w Akito Springs like a very important ceremonial site for the ton He has shed autown people and a lot of.
Destruction on those areas.
Sacred sites as well, there are very cultural and important for the Tono ten people, like Monument.
Hill, a burial site.
That wall was built right on top of it, and just keep moving and then you get to areas that are more remote until you get to Yuma, and then we have also Coco Pa Reservation there that there is no wall. The wall exists just after the reservation and there are some segments I believe that still have no wall in there. Recently there was the action by the state governor to put shipping containers there.
They were removed recently to be replaced with the.
Regular bowler type of boat. The wall that you see in other places. And yes, you keep coming past gal Lexico and all those areas until you get to Kumie Land and the Atai Mountains and all the way to what's known as Friendship Park, which is a BI national park located in the border between San Diego and Tijuana, which is the last BI national parker the only one
that we have in the southern border. And now as we speak, new thirty full walls are being built in that area as well, so even so President Biden.
Said that he was not going to build more walls.
We still see a new construction happening as we speak right now.
Yeah, And we've had friends of Friendship Park on our share before and I'm sure we will again because they do very important work and it's a very important space for so many families who are divided by the border.
Yep.
So I think people, I guess when we talk about ecological impact, people always like people like big animals, right, So the charismatic megafauna, I guess that are impacted by this. So maybe that's a good way to look at this. I know that there are some jaguars jaguars, however you want to say that that are impacted in it's my
very British penunciation. In Arizona, there is the bighorn sheep of course, who are closer to me need to Cumba where people will have heard the scripted series by the time this comes out, so they'll be familiar with the Cumba. Can you talk about the impact of the wall and those sort of bigger animals.
Absolutely. Yeah.
That has been our main focus as an environmental organization since two thousand and five, when the real ID Waiver came up, signed by George W. Bush as a response to nine to eleven and the intention of security borders.
The real ID Act waved every.
Single environmental law that we know, like, including the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, the lot that you can imagine it's included. It's about forty or more of these laws. We're completely waved in order to start building walls. We noticed right away that the first walls are st coming up. It was really easy for people to go over, under cut.
Through them, or go around them.
But then we start noticing the animals were not able to do that anymore. We're start seeing the impacts on some of the species that are super important. You remember the species of the desert. They need to cover large amounts of territories to find the resources they need to survive. We're talking about large migration routes that go from Mexico into the United States, back and forth. And just to mention some of the species that are considered in danger in the area of California.
We got the big corn chip.
Then you start coming and there's the Sonora and desert pro corn into the Sero, the altar. Then we got jaguars, in Arizona, we have also black bears. The thing that makes this area so special here in Arizona is what we have known as the Sky Islands, which is really high altitude mountains that you can find. Some of the species that come from the north, this is their southest more territory, and some of the species from the south
this is the northest most territory. So species like jaguars can all of a sudden be drinking water out of the same pond with a black bear, and that is very unusual and very rare and very amazing, you know. So we also have ocelots, which is another type of
cat that lives here in Arizona. We also have the Mexican gray wolf species there is in danger that use these corridors back and forth, and unfortunately we haven't had the opportunity to track properly a lot of these animals to recognize their migration patterns, because a lot of these animals cannot be put on a GPS.
Color for example.
But what we have done is put a lot of cameras on the wilderness and we're able to photograph jauars on this side of the border and photograph the same Jahwa a few years later in Mexico or vice versa.
So there is a lot.
Of proof that all these animals have been using these corridors for thousands of years. There is plenty of evidence that the importance of these wildlife corridors in the Sonoran Desert. And also we see, you know, like that with the construction of the border wall, a lot of the species that we used to see more often in the United States we don't see as much anymore. Animals have a memory, so when they come and all of a sudden cee this is really large obstacle, they're less likely to come.
Back and try it again.
And that can be an a racial thing that they came past it two future generations.
One thing that you mentioned that which I think is something else which it stresses, Like you spoke about how the jaguars and the pest can share the same pond. But the wall and the roads, which we should mention that too, right, Like people didn't just get helicoptered in to build the wall. They had to first build roads to get to the place where the border is to build the wall. And can we talk about how those have affected drainage and water sources along the border.
Absolutely. Yeah, water is life.
So here in Arizona, for example, we have two rivers that actually flow on north, the San Pedro River and the Santa Cruz River. These are rivers for example, San Pedro is born in Mexico and the Santa Cruz comes in the United States, then goes down to Mexico and then.
Goes up again. And a lot of the drainage that has been.
One of the biggest issues that we have encounter because the wall acts like a dam almost and in a lot of places doesn't allow the water to flow as it used to, and that is going to bring an impact to all of the different species of animals but also the plants that depend on this water to survive. So when the construction of the border wall came, you mentioned roads, and.
The road right next or adjacent to the wall.
Now it's like a four or five line road in some places, and it's been also increased the elevation. So when you increase the elevation on these roads and do not have the proper drainage on the areas that need to be and then you're going to have water being stuck on one side or the oider of the border and not able to make it to the areas where it used to flow normally. So we might not see the consequences and the first year or the second year, but we can start seeing consequences in a few years
from now. Several plants all of ausdden starting to die because they didn't have the water that their habita used to provide for them.
So that's why they grew there on the first place.
So we might see a lot of changes on the landscape in regards of the way that the water moved on those places.
Yeah.
So another thing I want to address is like the we talked about plants, right, and a number of cacti, specifically like cacti that is sacred to tou Hona autumn people have been either moved or destroyed in the in the construction of the wall around organ pipe and like just not on their reservation, but very much on their unseated homelands, right Yeah.
Yeah, the sawado cactus, it is considered as a relative for the ton autumn So you can just imagine the sentiment of the ton autumn people by looking at the sawados being chopped or bulldoze on these areas considered sacred for them, So there was definitely a lot of that happened. I mean, there is an airport, but we haven't seen it yet. It's just on written right now that they're going to revegitate some of these areas that got impacted. We're still waiting for that.
Yeah, And that stuff always comes like last and slowest if it happens at all. And I know like both the Kumii the Autumn, I'm sure other Atajoon Autumn, other tribes have had their their ancestral burial grounds as you mentioned, destroyed, and for a similar reason to the real Idea Act,
I think it was different. I think this was because it was done in an executive order and it was an emergency that they waived a lot of those Normally they would have tribal nations would have the right to sort of inspect and do a survey before digging that I know in twenty twenty they were they weren't doing that right.
No, they didn't know, so they really The Act also has a lot there to protects archaeological resources, so they were able to do those things when there was if it was on feederal land and it was indigenous sacred site.
Yeah, so another thing talking of federal land. That we should probably mention is this concept of the Roosevelt Reservation that people might not be familiar with. Can you explain what that is to folks?
The Roosevelt Reservation.
It is the area the border about sixty feet away from where the border line or division is, and that's what's known as the Roosevelt Reservation.
So that is an area that's right.
Now mostly managed by CBP border patron and.
People can't it's like technically not it can't be private land, right or the government can take it at any point.
Is that right?
Exactly?
And that's what they were using in the case of the around Campo. That's what they We're doing. One thing I think we've neglected to do. I guess I spent half my life trying to do this. But I'll let you take a swing at it, is like, can you describe these desert landscapes and for people who are because people think of the desert, right and they think of Osita wells, like where people like to go drive their vehicles, you know, and it looks like Saudi Arabia, But that's
not most of the desert. The desert is actually a very live place and a place full of like life that has struggled and made a way to exist there, can you explain. And it's a very special place, not just sort of because it's unique, but it has a real sort of well yeah, it has a uniqueness that you can't really feel anywhere else in the world.
I guess yes, Thank you, James. I definitely agree with you on that. As a person that I grew up here and had this deep appreciation for the desert environment, I think it's it is such a beautiful area, and not only beautiful on the sense that it's the Sonoran Desert, for example, is considered the most biodiverse desert.
In the world.
So yeah, so it's considered a desert because the amount of water that we have, but the amount of species it matches no other desert in the world. Here we have the most species of plants, most species of animals, and only for people like and people goes out there sometimes on a hike on the desert and might not see much of the wildlife there old than the birds, and especially on areas where there is a little bit
of water. But you got to remember also that the desert comes most alive at night, so that's when all the species you know that are not wanting to hang out on the heat of the desert, they come out and this place becomes like a whole other place at night.
So it is it is definitely worth protecting this and every single day, you know, because sometimes as we might not see the biodiversity in our first visit, it's there, and we like the amounts of plants and animals word enough to sustain entire populations of people as well in the past. So I think once you build that relationship with the desert and able to experience, you and everybody that I have talked started developing this really deep appreciation for it, for sure.
Yeah, it sort of pulls you in once you once you appreciate, Yeah, you become a desert person. We're talking about this cumber the other day, how like you just turned into a desert you know, you can see who the desert people are and who the people have been at there before. So obviously the desert is a beautiful place in a very diverse place, but it's not a place that it's necessarily easy to cross, right and when we as you've explained so well, there are the wall
is not a contiguous thing. It's full of gaps and holes, and a lot of the places where there are gaps of places where it's hard to build and therefore it's hard to cross. Can you explain what this It creates a funnel, right, like a funneling effects through the gap sometimes. Can you explain what that means people who are crossing north.
Yeah, there is a huge issue these funnels or areas where there are no walls, because what's been happening and we observe is that as more people start going to these really remote areas of the desert, we have two issues. You know, First, people is putting themselves on bigger danger and they're more likely to get themselves hurt and some of them die. So as also you start pushing up people to more remote areas out in the desert where
it used to be these nature pristine environments. Now we have the impacts of people moving through these areas, and not only the impacts of the people, but you got the impacts of border patrol in the area with their trucks and dragging tires to erase their footprints.
And these are really.
Fragile soils already opening new roads through the desert with ATVs or flying helicopters on these mountains or drones or putting lights in the middle of areas where used to be one of the most darkest skies in the in the country. So all of those put together create huge issues for people and the environment as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, the light thing you mentioned, like it's very I don't know people again who haven't been to the desert when understand how much more you can see when there is no light two hundreds of miles. There's a place I like to go which recently got a Border Patrol like substation, and now it's just like glowing and you
can't see the Noky Way and things. In addition to the human impact, which is we said is terrible, right, Like I think eight one hundred and sixty people Border Patrol found in twenty twenty two had died crossing north. That's a very low estimate for the amount of people who died, and Border Patrol are kind of actively trying not to count all of the deaths according to agents I've spoken to.
Right, So.
This is a difficult topic because it's.
A horrible thing that like shouldn't happen, But I guess can we discuss how lethal these The wall is for people crossing north if you're comfortable talking about.
That, yeah, well, definitely.
The design of it, like on most of places, is a thirty foot wall with a metal plate on the top on this.
For some.
Sources, I have heard that it was designed because when people relish terry food high, they start kind of getting dizzy or nauseous, so they're more likely to fall down. So it's already like a dead apparatus, you know, like designed to kill.
Still people will venture and give it a try. Some young folks are almost.
It's kind of funny to see them climb, how fast they're able to do it. But we got to remember that not only like young folks are trying to climb, you know, sometimes there is a older lady or sometimes an older man that wants to give it a try. And the rate of injuries definitely has increased so much. Or people falling because they got dizzy, or they got nausios, or they burn their hands or they lost balance and then fall from thirty feet high.
You know, it can be lethal.
So we have a lot of broken legs, spine injuries, head trauma, people that has fall or people one person one time hang out from it and end up choking herself. So there is definitely a lot of dead when people try to go over the wall. But we also see people now just cutting through the bowler so it's easier and then just put the thing back. So there is all kinds of people doing in all different kinds of ways depending on the area, And.
We see a little bit of everything for sure.
And of course, you know, if you try to reach for the gaps, then you have to do a longer hike, and usually people is not even able to carry the amount of water that they need to do these kind of hikes. We got to remember that a lot of the people that we encounter now in the border they come from other kinds of environments. They're not familiar with the desert. They come from tropical areas where they can find water everywhere. They are not used to the heat
of the dry heat of the desert. They are not used to the cold of the nights of the desert. So all of these factors make this environment really challenging for people to try to cross it.
Yeah, tell in a lot of ways.
Yeah, yeah, definitely, And it's a very hard environment. Like I spent a lot of time camping in the desert, and I I don't think there's a year that I've been hiking in the desert that I haven't rescued someone who was very well equipped and had just gone on a day hike, right and they've run out of water, they've overheated, they've drunk water and not electrolytes, and they've
got hype andatremia whatever it is like that. And that's people who went to our EI today before alone, people who've been walking since the Darian Gap, or you know,
people who are much lesser means to equip themselves. It's a very dangerous environment people maybe listening and thinking, like I think with immigration issues and specifically with the wall and the border, it's such an apparatus right the whole you know, DHS in its one hundred and seventy five billion dollar budget, it's such such an apparatus that people can feel powerless in trying to just put a stop to this, to make this change, to make this even
you know, a little bit more humane, just so we seem to like ratchet up the evil meter every year at the border, regardless of Democrats or Republicans, Like it doesn't matter, what would you suggest folks listening can do to make it more humane to advocate for, like even less impactful border policies on the environment or on people.
Yeah, I think we need to look at what we have done so far and look at the results.
You know.
I think we can see that in some areas to build a border wall, a mile of border wall, we're spending over the thirty million dollars, and I think it's important to think about what can we do with that money. You know, there is a lot of resources that we have used for this false sense of security a border work can give us, and it's just not working the way it's supposed to be working, and it's putting a
lot of pressure on the environment. And if we really care about the environment, I think that should not be after talk conversation because I think when we listen to politicians and it's our next time to go out to vote, we need to really start asking.
The questions about the environment.
I know it's important that we here in the border narrative of politicians talking about immigration, border security, trade with Mexico, but there is very little talk in the border around the environmental issues, you know, and that shouldn't be an afterthought border people. People that lives in the borderlands also should have a chance to live on a on a
good environment, a clean environment. Yeah and yeah, so I think a solution or for people things that they can do is definitely like ask those questions when it's time to bote and see how can we really address root causes. You know, the border wall is just a medieval solution that it's really trying to stop such a complex issue.
By doing that, it's not going to work out.
So it's originally Border Patrol said that the border wall is just the only intention it has is to slow down people for at least five minutes. Well is it really worth it then, you know, to slow them five more minutes to all these impacts and all these expenses that we're doing, and the maintenance that nobody has talked about yet is that we have sections of the wall already that they're falling apart because it was just thrown up really fast.
You know, the.
Erosion is already exposing the foundation, and we are looking at millions of millions of dollars that will come just to try to keep it every year after every monsoon season.
Yeah, yeah, I know in h on the real grand as well, like the wake from the border patrol boats is causing the river to undercut.
The foundation of the wall.
Yeah, which is fantastic on the part of the government.
Good work. And yeah, Eric, where can people follow you and your.
Efforts if they want to, if they want to follow along online and maybe see some pitches of the border and hear more about what you're doing.
Thank you, James.
I appreciate that we do have a website at Sierra Club Border Length. You can learn all about the waivers there. You can learn a lot of the work that we've been doing in the past. We're part of a larger coalition of environmental related border organizations. We work with people all the way from California through Texas, but mostly here in Arizona.
And we have our social media sere A Club Borderlands.
You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of the different We have a YouTube channel as well, and we can see some of the videos of the documenting that we do. We're able to go down to the border document with drones so people can actually look at the irony of the whole project.
We do also outings.
That we take people out into.
The desert to.
Get familiar with the issues themselves. We do clean up at the local rivers and collaborate with other.
Organizations all kinds of works.
So if people on the audiences based here in Arizona, they're welcome to join us to some of these autings or activities that we do with the community. We are going to do an announcement probably in the next month because since twenty nineteen, Sierra Club, in collaboration with the Southern Border Community coalitions to the federal government for the legal use of funds of the two eighty four and two eight h eight.
Funds, which were funds.
That were originally allocated for the military and drug related programs that were used to border well construction.
So we sue the government and we're.
About to settle on this and we're hoping that we're going to get good results on environmental remediation and wildlife passages along the Southern Border.
Oh great, that's good to hear.
Yeah, there are a lot of lawsuits individual tribe suit the government as well for that, and so we'll have to do a lawsuit roundup one day and have you back. Well, Thank you very much, Eric, thank you for joining us. And sharing some of your experiences along the bordy.
Absolutely, thank you for the invitation and I'll see talk to you sir.
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