A few weeks ago in early February 2019 I took an overnight road trip to view more wildflowers in northwestern Sonora, Mexico. I drove from my cactus rancho in Yucca, Arizona and spent the night in Ajo, Arizona, about 45 minutes north of Mexico. I crossed the border the next morning at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and then turned west on Mexican Highway 2, which runs within sight of the border for almost all of its 125-mile length. I re-crossed the border late that same evening and headed back north via Yuma and Lake Havasu City.

The US/Mexico border, as seen from Mexican Highway 2. Arizona lies behind the rusted steel vehicle barrier.

While the main focus of the trip was spring desert wildflowers, I couldn’t help but pay some attention to the border, which is quite literally RIGHT THERE, usually within a half mile or so of MX Hwy 2. Near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument west of the town of Sonoyta, Sonora, the border lies less than 50 yards away and is perfectly visible for almost 30 miles just to the north of the two-lane highway.

A view of the border vehicle barrier from the Mexican side of the fence. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument lies behind the barrier in Arizona.

Here, west of Sonoyta and just south of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (OPCNM), the border barrier consists of what is called rail-on-rail fencing. The vertical posts are spaced 5 feet apart and alternate between being 5 and 6 feet tall, with a single horizontal rail welded to the vertical ones at 3 feet high. Such a barrier stops virtually all vehicular traffic from crossing through.

Quitobaquito Springs lies in OPCNM a mere 150 feet across the border, about as close to Mexico as it can be without actually being in Mexico.

About 30 miles of vehicular barrier line the border between OPCNM and Mexico. Of that amount, 22 miles is rail-on-rail fencing; 1 mile (mostly in mountainous terrain) is Normandy-style barriers, consisting of large X-shaped crosses laying on the ground where post digging would be too difficult and costly; and 7 miles is the sturdiest type called rail-on-concrete-post fencing, which is concrete-filled hollow steel posts each set in concrete into the ground. The last type of fencing is used mostly near the urban zone around Sonoyta and while it is quite expensive, it is also nearly impossible to penetrate with a vehicle ramming into it or via cutting torches.

Tall cottonwood trees (Populus fremontii) and velvet mesquite bosques (Prosopis velutina) indicate the presence of permanent surface water at Quitobaquito Springs. The one-acre natural lake and several feeder springs with short streams surrounded by tree thickets and marshlands provides critical water and habitat for numerous species in this largely arid landscape.

Historically speaking, the only barrier that was here until recently was a simple barbed wire fence that mainly prevented Mexican cattle from wandering over to Quitobaquito Springs and trampling the sensitive wildlife habitat and fouling the water. I remember visiting OPCNM in the early 1990s and walking right up to the fence at the springs. I might even have crossed in an undocumented fashion, briefly. Don’t worry, I came right back home within a few minutes, if I did. 😉

The parking lot at Quitobaquito Springs in OPCNM. Yes, those vehicles are parked in the USA, while I am zooming in on them with my camera lens from a quarter mile away in Mexico.

In the 1990s, however, rising concerns over illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States led to the construction of hundreds of miles of tall and hard-but-not-impossible-to-penetrate border fencing in urban areas such as San Diego, Mexicali, Yuma, Nogales, El Paso, Laredo, and other border cities. These new fences had the effect of diverting much of the illegal crossing traffic (both human and drug-related) into formerly isolated backcountry zones that had nothing more than a simple barbed wire fence to delineate the border between the two countries. One of the hardest hit areas was OPCNM.

Note the presence of the namesake cactus of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Organ pipes (Stenocereus thurberi) reach their northernmost natural limits in southern Arizona, growing alongside saguaros, which occur quite a bit farther north because they are more frost-tolerant.

By the early 2000s, the amount of illegal vehicular traffic crashing through the simple barbed wire fence at OPCNM had reached crisis proportions. Carrying both human and drug cargo, the park was suffering greatly from the invasion, and over 200 miles of new roads were carved into the backcountry of this supposed wilderness area. Illegal migrants dropped tons of trash and abandoned their belongings before making it to paved roads 30 to 60 miles north of here. Many of these people were from wetter subtropical and forested climates and had virtually no understanding of how dangerous the Sonoran Desert and its isolation could be, especially in summer heat. Thousands of them died over the course of 25 years. The adjacent Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge (CPNWR) to the west of OPCNM was also impacted with hundreds more miles of random illegal new roadways, garbage, and deaths, as were other lands to the east along the Tohono O’Odham Nation and beyond.

Another view of the border fence/vehicular barrier. I believe that the white concrete posts and fencing in the foreground are possibly on the actual border. Or maybe they simply mark the easement of the highway, with the actual border lying between them and the rail-on-rail fencing. In any case the vehicular barrier definitely was constructed on US soil, so the precise border lies somewhere in the 50 or so yards between the highway pavement where I stand and the steel.

Desperate migrants driven by poverty and poor socioeconomic conditions in Mexico and Central America poured across the OPCNM border in particular, because after all, there were park roads only 100 yards away that were originally designed for sightseeing tourists that could provide relatively safe and private illegal entrance into the United States. All that cartels and human smuggling “coyotes” needed to do was drop people and/or drugs off on Mexican Highway 2 in a remote corner of the park or near Cabeza Prieta, where other people could come pick them up. Often the vehicles used didn’t even bother with the transfer and simply charged through the fence and drove on one of the hundreds of new miles of illegal backcountry roadways across sandy flats, headed north towards Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, or wherever else.

A senita cactus (Lophocereus schottii) lies toppled over just this side of the white cement post fence. The senita is very common in Sonora and also in Baja California, but is rare inside the United States, barely making it across the border into OPCNM by not much more than a few miles before petering out.

All of this illegal traffic placed immense strain on OPCNM staff, who were ill-equipped to handle the problems from both a funding and a management/legalistic standpoint. After all, the National Park Service is supposed to handle issues related to tourism, wildlife management, and ecological preservation, not drugs and human trafficking. In August 2002, a 28 year-old Park Ranger named Kris Eggle was killed in a shootout between drug gangs from Mexico, and National Park and Border Patrol enforcement officers. Something needed to be done. By 2004, Congress had appropriated funds for the construction of the steel vehicle barriers here at OPCNM and in other key places in all four states that share the border with Mexico. And by 2006 the border vehicular barrier had been completed, as seen above.

The fallen senita shown here was somewhat west of Quitobaquito Springs, and south of Cabeza Prieta NWR. I have not found verification that senitas are found in CPNWR, but given how close this individual is to the border, odds are nearly certain that a few isolated individuals occur there too, just as they do at OPCNM. One individual does occur near Yuma, AZ on public lands which is likely wild, and not planted by humans as an ornamental. Another also occurs in southeastern California, but is is within a quarter mile of a formerly inhabited place and might have been planted by people. Otherwise, the senita’s primary US range is within the boundaries of OPCNM.

The vehicular barrier has been a tremendous success. Despite the millions of dollars in cost, the benefits of nearly stopping the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across this section of border has justified the expense. According to a web page from the National Park Service/OPCNM:

“The vehicle barrier has stopped nearly all off-road vehicle traffic through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The barrier has not been breached, and monitoring has revealed a dramatic decline in illegal off-road vehicle activity. Visitor safety has increased, as the potential for high-speed chases along park roads has virtually vanished. The barrier design allows water, and animals, including the highly endangered Sonoran pronghorn, to safely roam their natural ranges uninterrupted.”

Lonely and fairly quiet Mexican Highway 2, looking to the east.

Here is where we need to start discussing the future of the border in terms of the manufactured “border crisis” being promoted by President Donald Trump. Trump won election in no small part based upon his oft-repeated promises to build a southern border wall, which he made thousands of times in his campaign rallies and in subsequent speeches, appearances, and events he’s held since taking office. The border wall (which Mexico was supposed to pay for, but never will) is perhaps the single most central promise he has made to his base. Leaving the divisive left/right political discussions aside, it is important to discuss why a border wall is not only unnecessary, but outright damaging in most areas.

The wild Sonoran Desert to the southwest of where I stand, looking at 3,904 foot tall (1,190 meters) Pinacate Peak, a dark volcanic zone of lava flows, cinder cones, and eruption craters that lies in Sonora between OPCNM and the Sea of Cortez.

The Pinacate Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site has been created by the Mexican government to preserve the volcanic geology and natural ecosystem of this wild and relatively intact section of Sonoran Desert. Since the Pinacate Reserve is essentially contiguous with both OPCNM and CPNWR north of the border, the three transfrontier parks combined protect over 6000 square miles of Sonoran Desert. This large protected area provides critical space and habitat for numerous Sonoran Desert species, some of them rare and endangered, such as the Sonoran pronghorn, desert tortoise, and desert bighorn sheep.

Dark volcanic hills rise over the Sonoran landscape in the Pinacate Biosphere Reserve.

While it was pretty clear that in the absence of sociopolitical and economic solutions that drive illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug running in both the USA and Latin American countries, that something needed to be done and that walls and vehicular barriers were part of the solution. So various work was funded and accomplished under several administrations, including those of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

One of a number of wildlife crossing signs depicting the presence of desert critters one might see along Mexican Highway 2. This is a roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus).

All three administrations prior to that of Donald Trump did something with respect to increasing border security. Compared to the flood of over a million immigrants a year coming across in the 1990s and early 2000s, the rate of illegal crossings via the border in 2018 and 2019 has dropped enormously. This major drop counts only actual physical border crossers, not people who enter the US legally via ports of entry at airports, legal ground border crossing points, ship terminals, and overstay their visas. Staying past visa expiration dates is the main mode of how undocumented persons entered the US in the 2010s, and that issue will not be impacted by an additional border wall in the least.

To the extent that illegal crossings and visa overstays are still occurring, they are doing so at levels around 25% of their peak flow in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It’s simply much better than it used to be, and a combination of walls in certain zones, vehicle barriers in others, and increased monitoring and patrolling along the border are what did it. All of this predated Donald Trump. Meanwhile his inflated and hysterical rhetoric over the “crisis” at the border has little basis in reality, especially not when compared to historical levels predating the walls, barriers, and elevated enforcement.

Cabeza Prieta NWR lies to the north of this view. While MX Hwy 2 is two or three miles south of the actual border at the point where this image was taken, it is easy to observe that this is a really remote, arid region.

There are reasons for why a wall was not built here along this remote and virtually uninhabited 125-mile-long stretch of desert flanking both sides of the Arizona/Sonora border: It was thoroughly unnecessary. While MX Hwy 2 runs alongside the border within one to five miles for the entire distance between San Luis Rio Colorado (located south of Yuma, AZ) and Sonoyta, Sonora, aside from the 15 or so miles between Lukeville, AZ and Quitobaquito Springs, there is no road on the US side. CPNWR and most of OPCNM are otherwise formally roadless wilderness areas with zero human infrastructure. Once those sturdy steel barriers were erected along the border here, effectively stopping all vehicular traffic, nothing more was needed. The problem was largely solved in this particular sector.

Another wildlife crossing road sign, this one a bobcat (Lynx rufus).

Vehicle barriers have also had an important additional benefit: They are relatively permeable to wildlife. Animals such as mule deer, pronghorn, javelina, tortoises, snakes, quail, bobcats, kit foxes, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, and even black bears and jaguars (which occur farther east in Arizona, if not exactly here) are generally able to go over or under the single 3 foot horizontal rail and in between the vertical posts spaced 5 feet apart. The barriers do stop human vehicles from crossing, but don’t present an insurmountable obstacle to the flow of wildlife, which needs habitat on both sides of the border.

More volcanic buttes lie north of the border, isolated from human impacts by aridity and lack of surface water.

Some animals must cross the border (including the highway) two or three times annually in order to have access to feeding or breeding territory, which can vary based upon where it has rained lately and how much. Cross-border wildlife migration also needs genetic flow to maintain healthy populations. This is particularly important to large, space-consuming animals that have low population densities, such as the top predators and large herbivores.

Cabeza Prieta means “Dark Head” in Spanish, and refers to the numerous dark volcanic-layered peaks that dot this segment of the Sonoran Desert.

Obviously a fence that is strong and high enough to stop humans from easily crossing it is more than enough to stop terrestrial wildlife as well. Photos are available online from various sources that show confused deer, reptiles, and in at least one case a mother mountain lion (Felis concolor) trying to access her small cub that somehow squeezed through the narrow slats, all being turned back by fencing primarily designed to stop humans.

Deer turned away at the border fence. Photo credit via Sierra Club Borderlands.

A wall doesn’t only stop terrestrial mammals and reptiles. In some cases, even low-flying birds such as quail, roadrunners, and ferruginous pygmy owls are deterred by a wall much higher than 12 feet (4 meters) despite them being theoretically able to simply fly over the barrier. But in these cases, the ingrained biological behavior of the birds preferring to either stay on the ground, or flying low to evade predators or find prey, limits their capacity to deal with this completely unfamiliar obstacle. This is what makes tall, solid or near-solid walls an ecological disaster for numerous animal species.

Colorful wildflowers sprout on sand hills piled up against the bases of the dark-headed volcanic peaks of the Pinacate Region. They include golden dune sunflowers (Helianthus niveus), white evening primrose (Oenothera deltoides), and pink sand verbena (Abronia villosa).

While some animals such as mule deer are abundant and widespread enough on both sides of the border that the overall impact on those species wouldn’t lead to undue population strain as a whole, the same can definitely NOT be said for much rarer species such as the desert bighorn sheep, jaguars, black bears, and Sonoran pronghorns. A fence could easily lead to the local extinction of some of those animals were they to be cut off from critical summer or winter habitat, or breeding grounds.

This is what I came for. I’ll make another more detailed wildflowers post elsewhere, but this and the following photos show some of the beauty of the desert after a wet fall and winter in 2018/2019 enabled widespread seedling germination and survival.

In the case of Sonoran pronghorn (Antilocapra americana sonoriensis), which is a special desert-adapted and genetically unique variant of pronghorn “antelope”, the construction of a border wall might literally cause extinction of the entire subspecies. There are only about 160 of them in the USA and maybe about 240 more in Mexico. Sonoran pronghorn are far more adapted by both behavior and physiology to surviving under immensely difficult conditions (which includes summer temps of up to 121 F / 49 C) than more common pronghorn of the Great Basin and Great Plains are. They rely upon being able to flow relatively unimpeded across this challenging, waterless landscape in search of food and rare oases to drink from. A border wall that severs the already small Sonoran pronghorn population in half would probably result in the genetic decline and possibly the ultimate death of both sides.

Brown-eyed evening primroses (Camissonia claviformis) and sand verbena (Abronia villosa) carpet a desert valley in between low but rugged mountain ranges just south of CPNWR in northwestern Sonora.

So this begs the question: If the vehicle barrier is so permeable to wildlife, isn’t it equally permeable to humans? Yes, of course it is. But the difference is that humans don’t live in the desert the same way that wildlife does, and we aren’t dependent upon access to critical habitat and breeding ranges subject to closing off by the political whims of a given party or presidential administration. The same isolation that helps protect the wilderness values and enables wildlife to survive here is what keeps humans on foot out. And now that the vehicles that we rely upon for survival during our temporary forays into the deserts of this region are excluded from free passage by hefty steel barriers, illegal human and drug trafficking in this region has plummeted. A wall is simply not necessary here. It just isn’t!

Chainfruit or jumping cholla (Cylindropuntia fulgida) blankets a large area in the middle of the range where MX Hwy 2 traverses the desert. This is the single most impressive stand of the species I believe I have seen, spanning roughly a half mile wide and maybe almost a mile long.

The borderlands between Yuma and OPCNM in particular are extremely well-defended by their remoteness, isolation, and aridity from illegal border crossers now that a vehicle barrier exists along essentially all of it. The only road on the US side is the one already shown that leads to Quitobaquito Springs, and you can rest well-assured that the Border Patrol is very much on top of the situation there.

BP personnel have increased along the entire border region from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, from about 4,100 in 1992 to over 21,000 today in 2019, so there isn’t much that escapes their notice anymore. Especially not with new technological advances and increased funding. In fact, I saw several BP trucks stationed atop ridges and hillsides, replete with sophisticated monitoring equipment, overlooking the valleys for miles below. I am pretty sure they watched me pull over, get out of my car, take some photos of the springs and parking lot and fences (I avoided taking any of them), and get back in my car to drive away. Had I tried to cross on foot, I am fairly certain that they would have been on me within 5 to 10 minutes.

Another sunset panorama of the massive chainfruit cholla forest. The common name comes from the tendency of the old fruits to cling to the plants for years, and putting forth new flowers every spring, which turn into new fruits. Several years of this results in pearl necklace-like chains, although you wouldn’t want to wear them. The fruits are an important food and water source for Sonoran pronghorns, however, especially in the torrid summer months.

Like the National Park Service says, illegal vehicular traffic has come to a near total halt in the park. There are no roads in Cabeza Prieta that are close to the border other than the ones occupied by BP, and a network of electronic security monitoring equipment, including drones and remote electronic sensors and alarms, is in play to help the BP detect incursions. Foot traffic is nearly at a standstill now that vehicle crossing is nearly impossible here. Why waste taxpayer money and environmental resources on a wall that won’t do anything more to stop already nearly-stopped illegal traffic here? It’s utter political nonsense.

A soft winter sunset descends over a scene of remote mountains and wildflowers amidst an extensive stand of cholla cacti.

In addition to not doing anything to further decrease drug or immigrant flow across the border in this sector, a wall would most definitely also have adverse effects upon the hydrology of the region. Desert washes that are prone to flooding cross the border both ways. Some of these washes are substantial, with watersheds spanning dozens of miles upstream, which are capable of heavy flows during monsoonal summer events in particular.

Flooding caused by an improperly-constructed border fence in Lukeville, Arizona and Sonoyta, Sonora on July 12, 2008. Water hit the solid fence some distance upstream of the spot, was unable to pass through whatever drainage grates there were, and was diverted through the Lukeville Port of Entry, which are the buildings seen in the background. Photo credits to Arizona Daily Star, via National Park Service.

There have been some reported troubles with even the relatively large gaps in the rail-on-rail vehicle fencing trapping woody debris, which can form dams and divert floodwaters into new areas. Sometimes significant sections of fencing are undermined or outright blown out by the force of the rushing waters. Erosion in new areas that were not prone to flooding when the channels were unimpeded has both environmental consequences as well as financial ones for taxpayers who must repair the damage, sometimes on an annual basis. Riparian vegetation can be reduced or scoured out by altered flows.

Flood damage to the border wall east of Lukeville, AZ on August 10, 2011. The wall acted like a giant strainer, catching all sorts of debris and clogging the flow of the wash channel until enough pressure caused it to fail.

All of these problems are compounded drastically once you make a large-gap vehicle barrier designed to stop motor traffic into a much smaller-gap or solid fence/wall designed to stop humans. Small mesh and narrow slats easily trap far more floating debris carried in flash floods than large spaces between rails do, and floodwater can pool to dangerous and even deadly levels within minutes. Particularly noteworthy examples of this occurred in Lukeville/Sonoyta/OPCNM on July 12, 2008, and in Nogales, Sonora/Arizona on that exact same date. Two people were killed in the Nogales flooding that trapped water up to 5 feet deep on the Mexican side of a debris-clogged mesh border fence that acted like a dam. I will link to two flooding-related articles as well as others relevant to the topics under discussion in this article below.

The flooding experienced by Nogales, Sonora on July 12, 2008 as a direct result of summer monsoon runoff built up behind the solid border wall separating it from Nogales, Arizona. Photo credited to Sean Sullivan/Wild Sonora.

While this somewhat extensive discussion is tailored primarily to the section of border that lies between Yuma and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, it is not difficult to extrapolate the principles I cover to many other areas. Some of the desert and montane areas of southeastern California and southeastern Arizona are just as geographically challenging and remote to get across as the OPCNM/CPNWR/Pinacate region is. Parts of the Rio Grande zones in West Texas are virtually equivalent, albeit in the Chihuahuan Desert instead. These areas are frequently roadless, occur in rugged terrain, are often on Federal lands such as National Parks and Wildlife Refuges, and are nowhere near urban areas which make them impossible to cross on foot. For those places, vehicle barriers are best, and the wilderness values that make them good for wildlife are least impacted that way too. Add to that technology, and if needed more personnel, and the border situation will be resolved about as well as it can be.

Photo credits: Sean Sullivan via the Texas Observer to the left; Ryan Bavetta via Flickr to the right.

Above are two images showing the border between the cities of Nogales, Arizona on the left and Nogales, Sonora on the right in each photo. The flooding was caused by an improper and hasty construction of border barrier across the flood channel that used to drain the city of Nogales, Sonora which lies upstream of the border. The channel went through a tunnel that was being used by people crossing into the U.S. illegally, so a grate was placed across it that prevented that, but also reduced the capacity of the tunnel to carry water by an estimated 40%.

Once a heavy rainfall event flooded the tunnel and trapped debris on top of an already-diminished capacity to handle heavy flows, the waters rapidly backed up into the downtown section of the Mexican side. Those waters were unable to drain because a solid border wall had been built there too. Note how the American side of the wall is experiencing no significant impact aside from a few inches of water coursing down the street well within the range of the gutters to handle it.

I bring up all of these impacts upon wildlife and humans to show that a “border wall” cannot and should not be a single, monolithic structure in the simplistic way Donald Trump seems to always talk about it. The U.S./Mexico border is 1,954 miles long, and obviously there are numerous regional and local considerations that need to be made, with many exceptions and changes necessary along the way when discussing border control and security. In many places a wall is the LEAST good solution and absolutely should NOT be built.

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In conclusion, it basically boils down to this: In the zones where a tall and solid border wall was needed, namely urban areas, those were built under Clinton in the 1990s. In the places where vehicular barriers and additional human-resistant fencing were needed, such as OPCNM and similar places where remote roads provided access, those were built in the 2000s and 2010s under Bush and Obama. Additional technology, security, and remote sensing capacity, along with increased Border Patrol personnel, were added under Obama primarily.

Trump’s call for a solid border wall everywhere is ridiculously late and entirely outdated, especially since illegal crossings (through non-ports of entry) are down by 75% since their peak circa 2004, when Bush was president. Prior Presidents and Congresses have basically already handled the problem. The only purpose a wall serves is his personal vanity and as a last-ditch effort to keep a dumb political promise that he shouldn’t have made and that people shouldn’t have believed. (Mexico was going to pay for it? Honestly, you believed that? If you did, you might want to ask yourself why?)

A solid wall, or even one with such narrow gaps that it excludes humans and nearly all wildlife, is ecologically ruinous and financially wasteful. Worse, it is damaging to important resources and ineffective towards solving the supposed “crisis”, while creating numerous new problems that today do not exist. To the extent that additional border security might be required, it can truly be addressed by better technology and additional staffing in virtually all cases. I hope that the discussion and photos I’ve laid out above will help make that case to readers who perhaps didn’t know.

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Links:

Good discussions on how much flooding damage can occur with an extensive solid wall built across numerous drainage channels in the desert sectors of the border:

https://www.kcet.org/redefine/trumps-border-wall-would-be-the-worlds-longest-concrete-dam

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26396487/ns/us_news-environment/t/border-blunder-security-fence-causes-flooding/#.XHPAH6B7kdU

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Articles on how the border vehicle barrier has dramatically cut illegal crossings at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument:

https://www.nps.gov/orpi/planyourvisit/barrier.htm

Moving Away from Walls: the Future of Border Manifestation in the American Southwest

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Articles on the Sonoran pronghorn:

https://www.nps.gov/orpi/learn/nature/pronghorn.htm

https://www.fws.gov/refuge/Cabreza_Prieta/wildlife/pronghorn.html

 

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