A Border Wall Between US, Mexico Is Bad for Wildlife Tik Root - The Washington Post
go to original November 8, 2016

US-Mexican Border Wall Stops Wildlife Crossing (Criselda Caringal)

In the last 20 years, border barriers have proliferated to unprecedented levels — and become one of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s favorite talking points. But while attention has focused on the human consequences of a more bordered world, the impact on wildlife is also dramatic.

Trump has proposed sealing off the U.S.-Mexico frontier with a “great” expansion of the current wall, which spans roughly 650 miles of America’s 2,000-mile southern front and is already harming animals. Bison along that border have been spotted climbing over barbed-wire fencing to get to food and water. And according to a 2011 study, 16 species in California have had as much as 75 percent of their range blocked.

“Completing a barrier that’s impregnable for animals would be a really major problem,” said Jesse Lasky, a biologist at Pennsylvania State University and author of that study. The move could affect more than 111 endangered species and 108 migratory birds, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife provisional report.

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the proposed wall’s potential impact on wildlife.

Two recent studies have shed light on the often-overlooked effect walls have on wildlife. The fences can “curtail animals’ mobility, fragment populations and cause direct mortality,” according to an article published last month in Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law. Authors of another study, released earlier this year in the journal PLoS Biology, write that barriers “represent a major threat to wildlife.”

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