scientists express concern about trump border wall proposal

Over 2,700 scientists based in the U.S., Mexico, and other countries have given their endorsement to a study warning of the dangers to animals and plants posed by President Trump’s proposed border wall.

The study, entitled “Nature Divided, Scientists United” appears in the journal BioScience, which is published by the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and calls the area in which the wall is planned for construction some of the “continent’s most biologically diverse regions.”

Segments of the wall that have already been built, contends the study, are reducing the “connectivity of plant and animal habitats and are compromising more than a century of binational investment in conservation.”

The study contends that many animals, such as the Mexican Gray Wolf and Peninsular Desert Big Horn Sheep, will, because of the wall, be separated from their natural habitats. Those separations will also impact the animals’ ability to reproduce.
Altogether, the study says, up to 1,500 plants and animals along the border could be endangered.

Nearly 1,000 scientists in the U.S. and more than 600 from Mexico have endorsed the conclusions of the study, which additionally calls upon the Department of Homeland Security to work with conservation agencies on both sides of the border in an effort to research the potentially damaging environmental consequences of the project.

Trump has indicated the he wants to see some kind of wall construction covering roughly 900 miles of the 2,000-mile long border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Around 14 miles of the border wall is currently under construction in San Diego. Another two miles is being built in Calexico, California; with a third portion of the wall stretching across 20 miles going up in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.

By Garry Boulard