Arizona on Wednesday agreed to dismantle a wall of shipping containers at the Mexican border that critics said was an expensive, ecologically damaging political stunt that did nothing to keep migrants out of the US.
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey spent US$90 million of public funds lining up rusting boxes in what he said was a bid to stem the flow of people crossing into the country.
The corrugated containers — which snake through 7km of federal lands like a long stationary cargo train — divide an important conservation area that is home to vulnerable species, but which is so difficult to traverse that human traffickers avoid it.
Photo: AFP
Now Ducey, who leaves office early next year, must dispose of the 915 containers from the Coronado National Forest.
In an agreement reached with the federal government, Ducey’s administration said it would “remove all previously installed shipping containers and associated equipment, materials, vehicles and other objects from the United States’ properties on National Forest System lands within the Coronado National Forest.”
From close up, the double-stacked container wall looks like the clumsy handiwork of a giant playing with building blocks.
Its presence is so jarring that, in addition to the federal court case, it was also the subject of two lawsuits by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization that has been active in the area for three decades.
“The biodiversity of this region is off the charts,” center member Russ McSpadden said. “It’s one of the most important conservation areas in the entire United States.”
Arizona shares about 600km of border with Mexico, including environmental preservation areas, national parks, military zones and indigenous reservations.
Until 2017, there was very little in the way of a physical barrier separating it from Mexico. Now, propelled by the policies of former US president Donald Trump, vast stretches of the border have a fence that towers up to 9m high.
Before the containers arrived in the Coronado National Forest — an area that can only be reached by dirt roads — the border here was demarcated by a wire fence.
That meager barrier was more than equal to the task of keeping people at bay, McSpadden said.
His cameras have detected jaguars, and he has worked with teams collecting data on ocelots.
“I’ve never captured migrant traffic on any of the remote cameras,” he said.
“It’s an incredibly wild valley. There’s no real urban population anywhere nearby. It’s a very difficult part of the border for migrants to cross,” he said.
Even if this were a heavily trafficked route, a casual observer could see that the shipping containers would not be effective.
The boxes do not line up in several places because of the uneven terrain, leaving gaps large enough for a person to walk through.
Others have holes rusted in them, and in some spots, it appears to have been impossible for workers to find a place stable enough to put a container.
A video shows a determined climber scaling the 6m-high barrier in a matter of seconds, gaining easy purchase on the textured box walls.
However, the containers block a waterway and the migration routes of the animals McSpadden studies.
“Jaguars know no borders,” he says. “Southern Arizona, northern Mexico — it’s the same for them.”
With males known to range hundreds of kilometers, animals that went north to hunt have become trapped away from breeding populations south of the border.
“Jaguars want to move back and forth freely,” he says. “This is their range, and the border wall bisects the jaguars’ home.”
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on Friday failed to attend in person an initial hearing at the International Criminal Court (ICC) as he faces crimes against humanity charges over his deadly crackdown on narcotics. The 79-year-old, the first ex-Asian head of state charged by the ICC, followed by video during a short hearing to inform him of the crimes he is alleged to have committed, as well as his rights as a defendant. Sounding frail and wearing a blue suit and tie, he spoke briefly to confirm his name and date of birth. Presiding Judge Iulia Motoc allowed him to
RSS